i am not so sure you'll see us go down in numbers by that much. Even with the VT nerf, we are still the most reliable mana returners in the game. If we take our current dps numbers (1500-1600) it looks daunting, but I think if we were to guestimate a dps at early lvl 80 to be about 2500+ we are still churning out 250mp/5 and I imagine at end game gear of 3500dps we would still turn out 350 mp/5 which is just ridiculous still. Nevermind the fact that they haven't touched VE or imp VE making us extremely valueable in encounters with raid wide damage.

I am dissappointed with the "cool" factor, but I don't think all of us are going to roll deathknights as a result.

You should all take a look at deep Discipline: I see that as Blizzard's attempt to force a raid to bring a holy, disc, and shadow priest. Unfortunately, Disc is still a broken mess, and won't supplant VT anytime soon if it goes live as it currently it.

It's a neat idea: a holy dmg class, that does off-healing (with accompanying buffs), raid single-target use-effect-buffs (Pain Suppression, Power Infusion), and brings IDS to the table, which for a lot of classes is going to be even more important than it was (almost everyone is getting a scale-with-spirit-dmg talent).

However, the half-a-dps'er that Disc brings is even more pitiful than shadow's current scaling with respect to the rest of the raid, and I'm not sure you could justify one in a raid spot just to get those buffs. If they improve Disc, then maybe shadow has something to worry about, otherwise, it'll still be 2-shadow-per-raid just for mana regeneration.

Do you seriously consider this bad? The 90% damage reduction for 6 seconds by itself would make my life easier on many encounters - fel rage on Gurtogg, being ported on Mother, dark barrage on Illidan, all kinds of random crap on Archimonde.

As far as our DPS, I agree it's currently subpar, but these changes seem to be in the right direction. Nerfing VT mana regen is necessary to increase our DPS without making us overpowered, and the improved scaling from crit and what looks to be about ~300 worth of free spell damage from healing (under the right interpretation of the talent wording) should help. Admittedly it's too early to call yet, but I'm actually optimistic given what I've seen so far.

The funny thing is, if blizz really wanted to push the hybrid nature of healing classes with the introduction of 20% increased dmg from healing gear (assuming it doesn't double dip from dps gear) then it would make a lot more sense to have that talent in the disc tree where a priest might actually heal as well as dps. Currently as it stands disc is just a healing tree with poor heals and a few "ooh shiny!" talents thrown in.

While I agree with your assesment of where the talent should be, since TBC, disc has been the survivability and utility tree for priests, not a non-shadow dps tree. The holy tree is both a healing and non-shadow dps tree and always has been.

I think the nerfed VT group output and increased personal damage is just what the doctor ordered in terms of how to make spreists scale... and we've been complaining about that for quite some time now. I don't beleive what we're seeing currently is what will make it to release, probably not even close if history is served, but at the very least these talents and this information make nice discussion points from which the non friends and family can help blizz pull their heads a little bit out of their asses.

For a 51 point talent, it is very sub-par. You named a small minority out of the encounters seen in TBC. While I don't mind the -90% Damage reduction and the small regen, it is far to situational and underwhelming for something so far up in our shadow tree. And as I stated earlier, it seems that what we give up in group regen isn't made up with our personal regen & minuet DPS increase (Comparatively).

Good point. With the VT nerf, they might actually change the +dmg modifiers on Mind Flay to a better level again. The alpha/beta testing will ofcourse be used to balance our dps out to other classes.

Nightmare is a warlock ability, not a Priest one.

That spreadsheet btw is missing an important component (although true we don't know the exactly scaling it has). It's missing Mind Sear.

Take a look again at Mind Sear. 5 second channeled spell. 481->519 dmg per second to all enemies within 10 yards (and including) the target. It's also 545 mana/cast.

It's *more* mana/second efficient than the new rank of Mind Flay.

It does *more* base single target DPS. (Over double the amount actually).

It has a damage range. Does this mean each tick can crit?

Even if Mind Sear doesn't scale with +dmg at all you'd still need around +1450 dmg for Mind Flay to catch up.
If it scales at a roughly equivalent amount to other similar AoE type abilities (say Blizzard, Hurricane, Rain of Fire etc) you'd need between +3500 and +5500 or so +dmg before Mind Flay catches back up.

And that's single target DPS.

If you manage to get even a single other target in the radius and it's game over.

Especially if you can keep up VT on 2 (or 3) targets and then spam Mind Sear.

Now it's true, the scaling will probably be crap and maybe the base damage is in error or the mana cost is in error and it'll be fixed. But going off the base dmg and mana costs as they stand, then Mind Sear is our new bread&butter spell, not Mind Flay.

You'd still Mind Flay at least once every 18 seconds to keep SW:P up (I've heard elsewhere that it's confirmed that this and similar talents function correctly. They don't overwrite ticks. They just renew the timer).

And Mind Blast is still higher DPS so on single target fights you'd still use that every cooldown (esp with the Imp Spirit Tap synergy).

Mind Sear definitely looks interesting, and if it retains its current functionality and values and does not come with a cooldown attached it adds a pretty interesting layer of depth to DPSing near CC'd targets. In its F&F alpha form it seems Multishot-ish in a way -- you don't have direct control over what it hits, because it isn't targeted with a targeting circle but rather hits a radius around a targeted enemy. So at times you might have to fall back on Mind Flay in order to not break CC, and other times you might be able to nuke 2, 3 targets at once with Sear while returning VT mana from both.

On the other hand it's disappointing that if these spells end up functioning this way when Wrath goes live, the blue laser that used to be our signature spell will be even lower on spell priority. Right as they give it increased range, too.

It seems to me that we are being given pretty much what we all asked for in order to fix this supposedly 'broken' class. In my view at the moment we are one of the most sought after classes and that won't change in wrath, we provide almost as much healing as a separate healer on raid damage heavy fights and the mana regen for the longer fights will always be useful even though its has been (justly) nerfed.

I am interested to understand how growing pains works as I believe it is there for holy priests to have competition on loot but with the obvious lack of spell hit on these items and the nerf to shadow focus its looks as though we will be gemming hit and damage on healing gear. I have no problem with this and not being in competition with the other dps clothies will be a nice change.

I for one will be continuing to play my priest into wrath purely for the fact it is the most fun and provides the most obvious benefit to the raid out of all the classes I have tried and the new talents do nothing to dissuade me from that view.

Here is my minor gripe. The expansion for SP feels more like a class reworking in a patch than it does an expansion. Does it "fix" us? It is looking that way. Does it have the "oh wow cool!" factor? So far it doesn't feel that way. I just look at our non shadow priests and I have to admit to bouts of jealousy. Holy priests got huge buffs and a new toy with spirit guardian, disc priests suddenly become on par with pallies for single target healing. I won't even talk about warlocks, or mages.

I guess I expect these changes to be more patch changes than something I will be paying XX number of dollars to play. I don't plan on ditching my priest or anything, but the excitability factor isn't there. Of course, Blizz can't please everyone.

It'll probably require a little more awareness on the part of the caster to use, but higher level gear will hopefully have more stamina to offset the increased damage done to oneself.

Our talents don't really impress me that much. Mind Sear (the current version of it, assuming similar scaling the things like Hurricane and Blizzard) however I reckon completely changes our raid role. We're an AoE spamming nuker that can heal our party and restore mana. Whereas other classes only use their AoE spells on AoE pulls because they're not all that mana efficient etc, ours is.

I am not quite sure how important mind sear will be during raids. While I think it is marginally cool that during AE trash pulls I can participate, it doesn't really enhance my role does it? Warlock AE still remains king with SOC and Mages have AE. People don't AE for a couple of reasons.. 1) Only one target, 2) need to make sure that tanks have their targets before AEing. I just wonder how important AE will be when we want to maintain VT up, and if we don't want to maintain VT up, then we are still less efficient than Locks and Mages.

I personally don't view getting to AE as anything but a means to prevent a hit to my ego when when we are killing trash mobs.


My impression so far is:

1) A huge, but necessary nerf.
2) Some small buffs that mainly offset the nerf to ourselves.
3) changes that are there mainly for Blizz's new philosophy on itemization. (Increased role of spirt, the conversion of +heal, etc).
4) And a mixed bag with our 51 point talent. If it is only a self buff, it is essentially an evocate with some application as a "oh crap, I pulled aggro" saver. Even if it is party wide, I can see it's power, but question the philosophy behind it. We are a dps class, and giving us a talent where we essentially sit and do nothing seems to go against how we operate normally. The nice thing about our utility has always been that it is contingent on our going pew pew!

I think you are underestimating the power of dotting multiple targets with VT and then AOE'ing.

I named a small minority because I didn't want to spend two pages listing all the encounters and situations where severely reducing incoming spike damage and healing myself for 36% of my hp would be useful. There is also the mana regen aspect - I don't know about you, but there are still a couple fights where I run into severe mana problems unless (and sometimes even if) I chain-chug mana pots - and who knows what kind of mechanics are planned for WotLK encounters. Yes, this talent doesn't directly increase our DPS, but other than that, what more could you possibly want from a single-point talent?

Does anyone else think that with the additions of auto-dot renewal talents, that they may change dot mechanics? One option I can see them doing is to reduce ticks to 1 second rather than every 3. This will prevent an auto-refresh from costing us dps and be a bit more forgiving in terms of spell rotations.

Obviously, we're getting AoEs (just like the moonkins) so that Blizzard can design 10-person raid encounters with heavy AoE components. It's not meant to make us happy (though side bonus if it does), it's meant to give Blizz more freedom in designing their encounters without mandating class stacking.

I think dispersion is primarily a PvP talent with some random PvE usefulness. Rather like the paladin bubble.

I think most of the changes read as "be careful what you wish for." There was an entire thread in this forum devoted to how poorly shadow priests scaled and how they were falling behind the damage of the other classes. Well, Blizzard listened - and as a consequence of upping our DPS it was necessary to tune down VT (which the cooler heads here had well foreseen).

On that note though, it appears that Blizz is moving in a direction where mana regen will actually matter more, so though our party output will be lower, it may also be more important. Someone has mined an effect that goes something like "Drinking a mana potion causes you to lose all mana after 1 minute" so the days of chain-chugging SMPs may be gone (it's also possible it's just an effect specific to one particular encounter, but I hope not). Mages will also be burning more mana with burnout (unless they all go 33/38 anyways) and I would not be surprised to see a change to lifetap along the lines of what Blizz attempted to do several times already. Plus the new moonkin haste aura will increase mana consumption (even assuming it doesn't go live in its current overpowered incarnation, the basic concept will presumably remain the same).

Even if they didn't up our dmg output, they had to nerf VT. There simply is no way around it. Ironically though, i do see so many other mana regen talents out there. Disc now has a psuedo VT, Holy has the "whoops, here is your mana back for that overheal", and if spirit becomes like stam, everyone will be able to regen their personal mana to a degree. I actually think they are making it so that Shadow Priests aren't as necessary as they appear to be in some encounters. This makes sense if they want to continue to tune 10 man content which by their nature will require flexibility in composition.

Personally, I see dispersion as a horrible 51 point talent in both PvE and PvP. In PvE the dmg reduction is very situational and essentially takes us out of doing anything. The Pally Shield which is far more resilient and doesn't prevent casting or movement just doesn't compare. 90% dmg reduction is good against trash mobs, but practically useless against bosses. As a clother, I probably will still get one-shotted by most bosses with 90% dmg reduction, and I would have to be able to cast it as soon as I get aggro, which shouldn't be happening anyway. As for the regen aspect, 6 seconds of 36% seems to be pretty low when compared to what we could be getting from VE and VT with those 6 seconds if we were casting. And personally, I don't even like the flavor of the talent.

You'd be wrong there. Hard hitting TBC bosses normally hit for 16-25k unmitigated, which is a fairly easily healable 1.6-2.5k per swing. You're essentially looking at a priest version of ice block+evocation with various benefits/drawbacks. Sure it's primarily a pvp talent, but it'll save you in a raid a surprising number of times.

For those numerous times I pull aggro with an additional -30% aggro tacked on top of the existing aggro reducers (Salv and Affinity)....

I'm not allowed to comment on why I think dispersion will be fine, but I think there's something we haven't seen yet about it that makes it make more sense *in PvE*. In PvP, having a combination anti-train/regen ability is very nice.