Spiritual Guidance: The Priest of 2009
by Matt Low 
Dec 27th 2009 at 4:00PM
I'm going to cheat.
I'm going to dip back slightly into 2008 to the point where Wrath of the Lich King came out. Priests everywhere had high hopes for their class. We were coming off an expansion where Circle of Healing Priests and Resto Shamans were the king. Since then, the other healing classes have been improved where they could hold their own in raids and compete.
Wand specialization removed
Yes! I jumped for joy when I discovered this useless talent had been removed from the Discipline tree. It was then replaced with the new PvE staple talent: Twin Disciplines. The only time I really used wands at the end game level was when I was regenerating my mana.
Lightwell became more useful
I am not a Lightwell fan. There's just something about an ability that requires other players to interact with it in order to be useful. Seriously! Players had to find it, then click on it in order to use it. But I will credit the blues on this. They did their best to try and make the spell interesting. They dropped the cast time, increased the number of charges, and increased the amount of damage needed for the effect to break.
Oh, and let's not forget that they dropped the cooldown to 3 minutes.
A valiant effort but I don't think it was enough for it to see widespread use by Holy Priests. Just for kicks though, I'm going to grab Lightwell anyway and start giving it a shot in Icecrown Citadel.
Circle of Healing became smart
Just before the debut of Wrath of the Lich King, the developers made Circle of Healing a smart heal. It would automatically target players nearby who were lowest on health regardless of their party. At that point, priests became an extremely attractive class to raid heal with.
Circle of Healing hit with a nerf bat
Circle of Healing was deemed too powerful. Either the smart heal had to change, or a cooldown had to be added between spell usage. There was a lot of criticism about this change. "No one's going to play a priest anymore." "Great, now we suck.""I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Priest voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened. "
Several months later, priests continue to be sought after and brought into raids to heal.
Levitate castable on others
Actually, this change was two fold. When glyphs were added, one of the new minor glyphs was Glyph of Levitate which removed the reagent cost of Levitate. I didn't have to slaughter any birds to fulfill my desire to walk above water or to safely jump off a cliff to avoid a Horde shadow priest trying to fry my brains.
Fissure in Obsidian Sanctum changed colors
Okay, this wasn't a major change that affected priests. Even though the void zone changed from red to blue, I still noticed players had a hard time seeing and staying out of them. Evidence that it had nothing to do with colors!
Hymns had been redesigned
Divine Hymn: Anyone still remember what this spell used to do? It was originally a PvP-esque spell. It incapacitated nearby targets and healed friendly targets. I remember using it in the original form during arena to try to knock out opposing players. That changed in 3.1.0 when Divine Hymn single handedly became the best healing spell in the game. Continuing the trend of smart healing spells, Divine Hymn became a channeled healing spell which would automatically target the players with the lowest health.
Hymn of Hope: This former priest racial turned a baseline ability accessible to all Priests. After 3.1.0, it turned into the mana equivalent of Divine Hymn. Yes, a channeled spell that restored mana raid wide for several seconds to players with the lowest mana.
Prayer of Healing castable on anyone
Prayer of Healing used to only heal up the party of the current priest. It was changed later on so that it could be used on any player within the raid. Not only that, it would continue to heal the target's party as well. That gave a great tactical edge to a healing priest since healing leads could set group specific healing assignments without having to position priests in certain groups.
Prayer of Healing then gets nerfed
Of course, it was (like Circle of Healing) deemed too overpowered and the healing coefficient was scaled back down even further. Although given the choice between being able to target any party with Prayer of Healing versus extra healing oomph, I'd go for the any party.
Body and Soul talent
Feel like going for a run? With Body and Soul, your Power Word: Shield gave you the ability to run quicker for several seconds. It's impractical since most PvP priests go down the discipline tree and Body and Soul is too far down in Holy. From the PvE standpoint, I've only seen it used specifically on the Anub'arak encounter in Trial of the Grand Crusader. I'm always willing to say that it's a must have to stretch out the kiting but I'm sure there are guilds who have done it without the use of this talent.
Dual spec
To be fair, the addition of dual spec wasn't strictly limited to priests. But it allowed us an extraordinary amount of flexibility in our roles in the game. We had the ability to go shadow and destroy stuff or switch to holy and discipline in order to heal. Granted, we had the capability to do this any time. Having dual spec just made the overall process cheaper and easier to manage. Priests didn't have to hearth back to town to change specs and curse if they screwed up a talent point somewhere.
Replenishment
Shadow Priests had their utility levels reworked. Instead of providing a flat mana return, Replenishment gave back mana based on the mana pool of players. They were one of the first classes to do so along with Ret Paladins and Hunters. Warlocks and Mages joined them later on. This buff continues to be one of the most sought after buff and just about every 25-man raid has someone providing them (who is hopefully a Shadow Priest)!
Dispersion
Another new iconic ability for Shadow Priests is Dispersion. This all-in-one spell causes the player to take reduced incoming damage, remove all snaring or stun effects and regenerate their mana back.
2009 brought in some great times and changes to the Priest class. Some of updates were a pleasant surprise while others were anticipated well in advance and frowned upon. Cataclysm promises even more Priest changes to come and even though Arthas isn't dead yet, I'm really looking forward to 2010 already.
What were your favourite Priest changes? What didn't you like?
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! And don't forget to check out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries! Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
venomslife Dec 27th 2009 4:16PM
i was perma banned over the coh nerf...i have never been so upset...eventually i got over it and went disc and i have been happy ever since.
i was one of the pretty vocal priests about coh-of course this was probably spurred on by my guildies at the time who constantly teased and provoked me lol.
i'm actually really glad they nerfed coh because i never would have tried disc if they hadn't tbh.
now i'm just holding my breath every patch waiting for them to nerf soul warding, or increase the time between bubbles from 15 seconds, to 30...-dont nerf me bro!
Redielin Dec 27th 2009 4:18PM
You might add something about the changes to Penance (PVP and PVE issues there), and the addition of haste to dots + the changes to glyph of shadow making Shadow Priests a viable spec again in 3.3.
Also, perhaps the rebalancing of spirit that has been going on all year could be addressed?
nekorion Dec 27th 2009 4:23PM
im still waiting for a more face melting 51 point shadow talent..
If it could actually be called melt faces I think there would be such a huge shift in the amount of shadow preists.
OIK2 Dec 27th 2009 4:34PM
Melt Faces:
Increase the Raid/Party's Crit Chance vs the target by 10% and decreace the enemy's attack speed by 25% for 15 secs. 8min CD.
Pop that bugger with bloodlust and watch bosses fall.
OIK2 Dec 27th 2009 4:29PM
You totally missed 90% of what happened with Shadow Priests! Where is the broken DPS in T9 followed by our amazing new Hasty Dots? VE is now a 30min buff instead of a debuff we need to cast on the enemy! You really glazed over the rape of our utility. You say what Dispersion does, but not how it has changed our gameplay. You mentioned the Lightwell, and I still have never even seen one dropped.
This is the Holy/Disc Priest of 2009, but you failed your shadowy brothers.
Nick Dec 27th 2009 5:39PM
I'm neither agreeing nor disagreeing, but this column does state "Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession." Holy profession, not shadow. It's only natural the healing trees get more attention here.
Ueber Dec 27th 2009 7:04PM
Matt glazed over pretty much everything about priests for the past year, period. The very least I'd expect for this sort of column is glancing through the major patch notes for the class (there really weren't all that many). Maybe throw in some thoughtful analysis. Instead we get an overview of a few of the changes that went in at the start of WOTLK. Oh, and the fissure color change to an instance next to no one does anymore.
I know it's hard to find someone that is seriously involved in healing and DPS, PVE and PVP. But this is one of the more established blogs on wow, and I hope the new guy's a bit better.
Kylenne Dec 27th 2009 7:35PM
This isn't exactly a new problem for this column, in fairness. Shadow's never gotten any attention.
robsolo Dec 28th 2009 10:05AM
I wouldn't say it was a problem at all. I always thought these articles were about healing, specifically priest healing.
spriest Dec 27th 2009 4:40PM
Shadow Priests were neglected until the just about the end of the year, I see our legacy lives on in the "Priest of 2009" where we've been lightly discussed. Nothing against the author really, but where's our time in the spotlight?
ummeiko Dec 27th 2009 4:43PM
You forgot a few key things in the discipline tree:
Namely Soul Warding making bubbles spammable (and arguably leading to the current hybrid raid healer/bubbler role that many disc priests fill). Along with that came baseline Divine Spirit/Prayer of Spirit. Also the penance changes (glyph in 3.1, followed by cooldown increase in 3.2 basically "mandating" the glyph to be back where we were at the start of wrath).
For 2010 all i want is a little balance or perhaps consistency. Priest healing has been a roller coaster of top of the world to "z0mg we suck". Basically, we're either OP (beginning of wrath, ulduar) or struggling to break even (3.0.8 until 3.1, ToC). In reality, aside from the CoH nerf, there hasn't been a lot of fundamental changes to the priest class when we go from top to bottom - we just get put into encounters where we simply don't shine, and to be honest, we struggle. In ulduar, we shined... aoe damage everywhere. In ToC and the post-nerf tier 7 content, we faltered - the damage was mostly single target or 2-3 random targets - forcing us to flash heal spam which can't keep up when compared pallies and shaman.
It's the price we pay, particularly as holy, for our versatility. Something is always a little behind. Unfortunately priests who get stuck with whack-a-mole flash heal duty or strictly single target healing, are going to be behind the other classes.
Gothia Dec 28th 2009 5:58AM
I can't agree with you more since Lk Priest have taken a back seat to other hybrid healing classes in current raids. We are still a dominant class for group heals and unfortunately this is not viable against a raid healing Druid or Shaman. Disc, I can't play them, but am still convinced that they take a backseat to Paladins. Hopefully the next expansion will put Priest back on top where they belong.
Shadow is a forgotten spec that takes a backseat to all other dps classes unless Aoeing. We are still considered a utility class - with much utility lost or homoginized.
uncaringbear Dec 27th 2009 5:33PM
Pretty light on the Shadow priest changes.
Carrie Dec 27th 2009 5:57PM
Do people still hate Dispersion? I have always loved that talent, it's basically a free mana potion.
Unfortunately I wasn't here for most of 2009 but my shadow priest is still pretty nifty if you ask me.
OIK2 Dec 27th 2009 6:41PM
I know I would not raid without Dispersion. While it is light on the Pew Pew aspect of shadow priests, it does a great job of focusing on our other strong suits, survivability and mana regen, as well as giving it a little PVP flavor with the snare/slow wipe(though would love to see it make us immune for duration). In Ulduar it was a little nerfed because there were too many boss abilities that negated it...Give us a shiny new toy and then only let us play with it on trash. It does shine on Algolon though. Come ToC/ToGC it really came into it's own. When a Snobald is on my back, when a worm makes covers me in fire/poison, almost constantly in Faction Champs to keep away from melee, depending on your strat it is almost neccessary for HM Twins, and it can be used to save a set of wings on HM Anub.
And with all of the random heroics there are to run now it is hard to overlook the "Walking Water" function of it.
jorge_av Dec 27th 2009 6:10PM
See that is why they are looking for another priest columnist. Matt is great for all things healing but for all intents and purposes SPriests could be a lock to him and he wouldn't know the difference.
At any rate, most of what Matt covered in the past year helped me start to heal. I actually went step by step with his advise on talents... and even managed to do a bit of PvP. It will be really nice when Matt is strictly doing Raid Rx and they get a someone with more than passing knowledge of a SPriest doing Spiritual Guidance.
Terrant Dec 27th 2009 6:20PM
I feel the priest community was much more vocal and upset this year than the past. :Shadow priests are upset about Dispersion and PvP. Holy priests feel old and unimpressive, both as healing priests next to Discipline and as raid healers compared to resto shamans. Disc priests talked less about what they had and more about what they didn't - Power Word: Barrier. However, I think it's fair to say Discipline has grown from ugly duckling to beautiful, damage-mitigating swan.
On an optimistic note, i think there's a lot of anticipation for 2010. Worgen, goblin, gnome, and tauren priests (the latter ready to duke it out with paladins for the title of Holy Cow) are on the horizon. They'll bring a lot in terms of aesthetics (tauren in cloth!) as well as roleplaying. Healing itself will be overhauled - if not with Cataclysm, we'll certainly look for signs towards a new paradigm in upcoming patches.
Tridus Dec 27th 2009 9:06PM
Yeah, it's true. Wasn't really a great year for Priests. Get a toy, take it away.
Tridus Dec 27th 2009 9:10PM
I really don't use PoH very often anymore, they nerfed it so hard that it doesn't keep up with other heals at high gear levels. At this point, the old version was better.
The year was up and down really, for Priests. Some cool stuff, and some not cool stuff. The T9 4pc was about the worst set bonus ever, but the 2pc was awesome. Stuff like that all year long.
darrinjc Dec 28th 2009 12:21PM
Try the two spider trash pulls before Lady Deathwisper. That AOE damage she does has me chain casting PoH. 7k hps on a trash pull is nuts, but its funny what a PoM/CoH/PoH rotation will do (as well as free flash heals from Surge of Light). And on trash too..hehe