I mentioned on my earlier post that priests in PvP are just awful and I wanted to touch on it a little further. No wait, scratch that. It's just plain bad.
I'm no arena junkie, nor have I ever claimed to be. I'm a casual PvPer that enjoys occasional random Battlegrounds. I have extremely limited arena experience. I've won a few rounds in Wrath, and lost quite a few more. I have learned that I excel much better at BG's where I'm not always the focus of the enemy's attack. I like to have fun in PvP. PvP is no longer very fun to me as a healer.
Blizzard broke healing in PvP by breaking mana costs, cast times, and homogonizing all melee classes. And before you ask, yes this is going to be a QQ/rant post.
Speaking from a healing priest point of view, we are currently the worst healers in the game for PvP and even some DPS classes heal for more than we do.
1. Mana Cost and Cast Times- With the increase to mana costs and the 3-heal strategy that Blizz has implemented for PvE, PvP healing has been greatly affected. The only viable heal we currently have is Flash Heal which is extremely expensive. Heal and Greater Heal cast times are extremely brutal in a PvP environment. The 2.3 second cast times are like an eternity and are easily locked out by opposing players.
2. Dispels- Discipline priests in paticular are greatly affected by this. Dispels are out of control. Every time I go into a BG, there is a mage or shaman running around Spellstealing or Purging everything off of everyone. Our shields are extremely vulnurable to dispels and make up for our lack of throughput. Back in Wrath, priests had dispel resistance, which made us very viable for arenas and BG's. It's time to reintroduce the concept. Nerfing Purge by 1 dispel effect isn't enough. A cooldown needs to be implemented or priests need dispel resistance. What's surprising is that they didn't even touch mage's Spellsteal. A mage wearing Mage Armor and spamming Spellsteal never goes OOM.
3. The Days of the Clothie Tanks Are Gone- Priests use to be what we called "clothie tanks". In Wrath, this was true. Priests could tank multiple DPS classes at once. Our shields were strong, heals were quick and efficient, and we had dispel resistance. This is no longer the case. We get eaten alive by most melee class. Death knights, warriors, feral druids, you name it and they can kill us within 15 seconds with CD's popped all by themselves. Paladins and rogues for some reason don't seem to be that bad. I'm not sure why this is. A skilled rogue can be a problem, but paladins are really only a threat if they pop Avenging Wrath which is easily dispelled.
4. Did all melee classes REALLY need an interrupt?- Rebuke and Skullbash are a few of the new interrupts some melee classes have. Now every melee class has an interrupt. Feral druids are currently unstoppable. If you have one on you, you're pretty much dead unless a dps can CC him off you, and even that is pretty sketchy since ferals can break fear, immune to polymorph, break roots, etc. The only legit CC is Cyclone, which another druid needs to be nearby. With cast times being so long and priests not having any way to remove snare effects we are extremely vulnerable to interrupts. And because Blizzard thought it was a brilliant idea to give all melee classes an interrupt of some kind, it pretty much makes it impossible to heal through.
5. Psychic Scream only works 10% of the time- Seriously, half the time its either resisted or it misses. The "missing" part doesn't bother me since I'm not hit-capped, but I do have spell penetration, yet most of the time its resisted and has an agonizing 30 second cooldown. This is our only efficient way to CC, other than Mind Control which has an unbearable cast time and is easily interrupted.
6. Penance Doesn't Heal For Squat- It heals for a little more than it did in Wrath. It heals for about 15k with no crits total and has a long 10 second cooldown. It's also vulnerable to interrupts, being a channeled spell. Other than Prayer of Mending (which requires you to take damage to even work), Disc priests don't have a reliable instant cast spell like Holy Shock, Riptide, or Swiftmend. ALL spells are vulnerable to interrupts or counterspells. Desperate Prayer is nice, but its on a lengthy 2 min cooldown and doesn't heal for much.
Patch 4.0.6 will fix a few but not ALL the problems we are experiencing
There are a few things to look forward to with the new patch for PvP.
-Desperate Prayer is getting a huge and much needed buff
-Penance is getting buffed by 20%, but the mana cost is increased by 7%
-Ferals are getting nerfed to the ground. They won't be able to break fear anymore and they can't escape root effects (snares will still be able to be broken)
-Strength of Soul is being homogonized with Inner Focus to give us interrupt and silence immunity for 4 seconds every 45 seconds
-Purge has been nerfed to only dispel 1 effect instead of 2
-Mana Drain is being removed from the game (sorry locks!)
-Strength of Soul is now being affected by Flash Heal and Greater Heal, so we can shield more often
-Power Word: Shield is seeing a huge buff (22k-24k shields), but the mana cost has skyrocketed as well
-Renew's mana cost has been reduced by a decent amount
-A new glyph called Glyph of Prayer of Mending is a new attractive PvP/PvE glyph that buffs your initial charge by 60%
What I'd like to see in a future patch:
-A new or improved Penance. It's just too vulnerable to interrupts right now to be very viable. Holy Word: Serenity is much better. Maybe make Penance be able to be cast while moving.
-Mana cost reduction to our shadow spells. Mind Spike can get costly to spam and our DoT spells are extremely expensive making it impossible to cast them without a serious mana penalty, especially since they are extremely weak. Druid DoT's have come down in mana cost greatly, why can't our shadow spells do the same?
-Priests don't really have any "free cast" dps ability. Druids have a free cast Wrath which is extremely efficient with their DoTs. Shamans get mana back by casting Lightning Bolt and Pallies can infinitely cast Excorcism if specc'd apporopriately. We lack in mana-free offensive abilities.
-Another nerf to offensive dispels for all classes. I'd like to see most offensive dispels to be made with a 15 second cooldown. Mages will keep running around spamming spellsteal with no penalties. Shamans will continue to spam Purge. Even priests need a nerf for our own dispel ability.
-Some type of talent in the Disc tree to make Fade remove snares, as it does for Shadow. Hamstring, Chains, etc are absolutely brutal for us. We have no way of removing snares. Pallies have HoF, druids can shapeshift, and shamans go Ghost Wolf. Meanwhile, we get eaten alive.
Well thats about all the issues I can think of for now. I can't wait for the patch to hit tomorrow so I can test out some of the changes.
<3
Lunar
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