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Q u o t e:
What if blizz gave us a lightwell bar, like a pet bar and let us put the charges on people?

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That's an interesting idea. Perhaps the "Lightwell" pet wouldn't disappear until the charges had been used, giving the priest time to figure out the hotkeys, mouse over the pet's spell to read the tooltip, and whatnot. The cooldown on the ability wouldn't begin until the charges had been used up (let's say that it has a 3 minute cooldown -- a priest that called the Lightwell pet 3 minutes before a boss fight wouldn't be able to use the pet twice in a row because the cooldown would only start once the pet had expired).

One problem is that making it a pet would make it susceptible to taking incidental raid damage. Sounds like a much more interesting hazard than "the DPS never click on it so it always goes unused" issue, though. Heh.

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Q u o t e:
If Pain Suppression is a targeted Shield Wall, why can't it be off the GCD? Not using Pain Supression because a 10k hit turns into a 6k hit when someone is at 5k HP really sucks.

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Yes! what you said!

Often when using pain suppression it is a reaction, but it is debatable if it is worth using on a person getting bursted since you wont be able to heal them while you wait for the gcd (which kills the target sometimes). I am talking about 3s and 5s of course.

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Q u o t e:

That's an interesting idea. Perhaps the "Lightwell" pet wouldn't disappear until the charges had been used, giving the priest time to figure out the hotkeys, mouse over the pet's spell to read the tooltip, and whatnot. The cooldown on the ability wouldn't begin until the charges had been used up (let's say that it has a 3 minute cooldown -- a priest that called the Lightwell pet 3 minutes before a boss fight wouldn't be able to use the pet twice in a row because the cooldown would only start once the pet had expired).

One problem is that making it a pet would make it susceptible to taking incidental raid damage. Sounds like a much more interesting hazard than "the DPS never click on it so it always goes unused" issue, though. Heh.

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The idea behind lightwell is that the priest doesn't lose their current target which they would with a pet style lightwell. If you are targetting the player why not just heal them yourself? I don't mean to shoot holes in peoples ideas but that is a very flawed design.

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Q u o t e:


The idea behind lightwell is that the priest doesn't lose their current target which they would with a pet style lightwell. If you are targetting the player why not just heal them yourself? I don't mean to shoot holes in peoples ideas but that is a very flawed design.

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That was just in response to the post I quoted. He had talked about having to concentrate on many things at once and i suggested having us concentrate on another thing. On page 5 I have a better actual solution to lightwell which seems more realistic

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Q u o t e:


I know its a snappy response...but it's actually true.

(Your response was snappy)

Blizz, do other classes even consider stuff like this? I do the same thing with shadow protection and abolish disease. I don't want the good spells purged from me first.

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It sort of just boils down to this (assuming they are dispelling it): do you want it to cost you and the enemy X amount of mana, or do you want it to cost you X amount of mana and the enemy X-30% mana to dispel your more useful dots?

Well i think i am confusing myself there...

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Q u o t e:

I don't have a satisfactory answer for you to be honest. The way the Q&A's are developed is complicated. That question wasn't intentionally skipped. If you feel that you have a really good sense of the most important frequently-asked questions, you're welcome to provide me with a list, Naphomci. If the community seems to agree that your data accurately summarizes the priest community's questions, I'll take as many of your questions as I can. Just to be clear, I'm being completely sincere about that.

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Probably too fair to be playing a priest tbh

I think the issue with haste not scaling well is more a dot class issue (afflic warlocks argue the same thing, resto druids etc). Making dots tick faster may not even be possible game mechanic wise.

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Q u o t e:
Well that was disappointing.

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Honestly, I just would like an answer as to why you guys feel that Prayer of healing needs to be nerfed.. I already feel that I am not as good a raid healer as a druid.... why take away our bread and butter? I almost feel as if I need to switch just to disc... although the nerf to penance is also concerning

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Q u o t e:

That's an interesting idea. Perhaps the "Lightwell" pet wouldn't disappear until the charges had been used, giving the priest time to figure out the hotkeys, mouse over the pet's spell to read the tooltip, and whatnot. The cooldown on the ability wouldn't begin until the charges had been used up (let's say that it has a 3 minute cooldown -- a priest that called the Lightwell pet 3 minutes before a boss fight wouldn't be able to use the pet twice in a row because the cooldown would only start once the pet had expired).

One problem is that making it a pet would make it susceptible to taking incidental raid damage. Sounds like a much more interesting hazard than "the DPS never click on it so it always goes unused" issue, though. Heh.

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Q u o t e:
Here, I'll help make lightwell useful for everyone:


1) You cast the spell. A floating ball of light appears behind you, as a mini pet would. Heck, maybe it can even fly over the priest's left or right shoulder, kind of like they're holding a balloon of pure light. This summon has a 3 minute duration, and comes with a pet bar.

2) When you want it to heal, you can manually target someone and have the pet "attack" the target, where it'll run over to the person and add the lightwell effect on them.

3) The "Lightwell" ball will have a 100 energy meter, and every "heal" it does will consume 10 energy. This energy is unable to be replenished.

4) You can set up this pet to be on aggressive/passive/defensive. On Aggressive, it'll run around like a crackfiend throwing heals on anyone that takes damage. Won't last long, but will get a lot of healing done fast where the priest doesn't have to worry about(what should be it's functionality now). On Passive, it will only ever respond to the priest's input. If none is given, the ball will fizzle out after the 3 minute duration is up. On Defensive, it will only go after players independently if they dip below 40% health.

5) The pet will be programmed to never do anything on it's own to the person with current boss agro(since the breaking on damage mechanic was solely in place to prevent a tank from ever getting any benefit from this spell).

6) The pet's automatic functions(defensive/aggressive) will only work on targets within 20-30 yards of the priest.

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*cough* :p

Drinkfaygo i read your post and I meant no disrespect to your idea or to the other poster. Just stating my opinion and yes i did read your suggestions on page 5 :)

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Q u o t e:
Q: Shadow Word: Death was once a spell that priests used frequently in PvE, but has basically dropped off their bar. Are there any plans to improve this?

Ghostcrawler: We think Shadow priests have enough spells to manage as part of their rotation, so we don’t want to necessarily go back to them using it on cooldown.

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The thing is, though, that in TBC we had five spells in our regular rotation, while we now have four because of SW:P being maintained with MF and SW:D not being cast on cooldown. In addition to that, DP is much less fun than SW:D - not only does it have a longer cooldown, but there's also nothing like SW:D's backlash to consider when casting it. I for one think the decreased complexity involved in Shadow DPS has made it less fun to play.

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Q u o t e:
The idea behind lightwell is that the priest doesn't lose their current target which they would with a pet style lightwell. If you are targetting the player why not just heal them yourself? I don't mean to shoot holes in peoples ideas but that is a very flawed design.

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I use mouseover macros for all of my healing, so "uh oh, I don't want to lose my current target" isn't something I've worried about for months now, if not years. Perhaps the pet's spell would act as if it were in a mouseover macro by default (hold your mouse over the unitframe, press ctrl-1 or the hotkey of your choice, and bam, the HoT's been cast without you having to change targets).

Alternatively, it can just heal without input from the player like the ghostly Karazhan priests or the Timbermaw Ally and just cast the HoT on whoever's in range with the lowest health.

@ Meia: Don't cough at me, I was just replying to the dwarf. >_>

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Q u o t e:
Drinkfaygo i read your post and I meant no disrespect to your idea or to the other poster. Just stating my opinion and yes i did read your suggestions on page 5 :)

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I like your choice of gems. Instead of spirit (which they nerfed) you used int. Was that a calculated choice for mana regen or just for the increase of mana?

Good job.

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Q u o t e:
I was looking forward to this Q&A for a very long time. I feel that most of the classes play well as least to my standard. The Priest class on the other hand has always been a bit confusing since I feel it has evolved so much compared to other classes.

I am still interested in why Inner Fire needs charges. Sure Priests get Leather Armor protection, but of the 4 healing classes they have the weakest defense. Paladins have Shields, Parry, Plate Armor, Hand of Protection, Sacred Shield, Devotion Aura, Divine Protection, Hammer of Justice, Hand of Freedom, Blessing of Kings, Divine Shield, Blessing of Kings, Turn Evil, Holy Wrath. Druids have, Mark of the Wild, Bear Form armor bonus, Leather Armor, Barkskin, Travel Form, Entangling Roots, Tree Form armor bonus, Bash, Dash. Shaman have Chain Armor, Shields, Earth Shield, Ghost Wolf, Stoneskin Totem, Grounding Totem, Earthbind Totem, Frost Shock, Wind Shock, Earth Shock, Frostbrand and Hex.

You will notice the only talents listed were the defining talents of the Shaman and Druid healing trees. If we list the Priests survival tools that have Psychic Scream, Inner Fire, Power Word: Fortitude, Power Word: Shield and if they are Discipline specced they get Pain Suppression. They are the primary healing class, because they have two healing trees instead of one yet they have the least survivability. Would removing the charges on Inner Fire really be that overpowering?

We call look at the Warlock and Mage since they were listed in response to the Priest's question concerning Inner Fire. Warlocks have Fel Armor or Demon Armor, Voidwalker Sacrifice, Succubus Seduce, Imps Blood Pact, Fel Hunter Devour Magic, Fel Guard Intercept, Fear, Soul Link, Metamorphosis, Curse of Exhaustion, Siphon Life, Howl of Terror, Death Coil, Healthstone, Haunt, Shadow Ward, Demonic Circle and Shadow Fury. Mages have Polymorph, Frost Nova, Ice Armor or Mage Armor or Molten Armor, Blink, Blast Wave, Dragon's Breath, Deep Freeze, Water Elemental's Freeze, general snare effects from Ice spells, Frost Ward, Fire Ward, Ice Block, Ice Barrier, Invisibility, Mana Shield, Slow, Spellsteal and Counterspell.

Many times over more defensive skills on these two offensive classes, and the Warlock has many healing skills not including talents. It would not be fair to disregard the Shadow Priest's Shadow Form, improved Shadow Form's effect on Fade, Silence, Psychic Horror, Dispersion and Silence. Shadow Priests do have stronger defenses but they also cannot use their healing spells while in Shadow Form. I do not see how allowing Inner Fire to function without charges would imbalance the class when they already suffer many defensive set backs compared to other healers and to other cloth wearing casters.

Lightwell was also a major concern. It has been known, and still is known to be one of the least used talents. It has been improved multiple times and still is unused and considered ineffective. Why this talent has not been replaced is beyond me and why Blizzard refuses to consider this more frustrating. Many classes have much better 31 point talents or even have multiple 31 point talents.

I was disappointed with the response to Shadow Word: Death. It should be an Execute type ability and yet it's damage is sub-par and it injures the Priest. The spell needs a major improvement, not to become part of a rotation but as an effective finisher and overall spell.

The one question that I am sure others would find pointless but is a major interest for myself and a few others is the state of Holy damage. There are a few Smite Priests who would really like to see Blizzard look at the ability for Holy Priests to provide Burst DPS. Shadow Priests are known for their DoT Shadow spells. Some Priests would like to see Holy Burst damage as an alternative option. Why is Healing Focus not Holy Focus? Smite and Holy Fire are very susceptible to knockbacks. Could an interesting Holy damage rotation be added? There have been many suggestions, why were these not addressed?

You mention that a Frost Spell might be added to help prevent Shadow Priests from being locked into one damage type and to that I ask why? I always wondered why Mana Burn was a Shadow damage spell and not an Arcane damage spell, and with Starshards previously having been in the Priest line, why not add an Arcane damage spell to the Discipline line along with making Mana Burn into an Arcane damage spell? It would give a second damage type to prevent complete lock down.

Is there any intention of improving Mana Burn? Power pools have grown larger and yet the spell has not been improved meaning that the Priest burns a significant amount of their own mana in order to drain someone elses.

My final question is why do the Paladin spells Holy Wrath and Turn Evil effect Undead and Demons but the Priests Shackle Undead isn't called Shackle Evil and effect Demons also? This gives Paladins a distinct advantage over Priests in their ability to crowd control more classes of monsters and giving them the ability to remove Warlock pets and Death Knight pets from a fight whereas Priests can only Shackle the Death Knight's pet and must use Psychic Scream or if they have it Psychic Horror on the Warlocks pet.

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So I have a question.

It seems as if the stance towards healing is that priests should be secondary healers.

In games that have defined class roles, classes break down into one of two catagories. They are either defined as being a 'pure' class or a 'hybrid' class.

Currently, there are 4 healing classes. Priests, Paladins, Shamans, and Druids. Of the four, the priest is the only 'pure' class. As the Q&A stated, Priests differ from the other healers by having two healing trees.

Typically, hybrid classes work through a system of trade offs that usually result in the class being a jack-of-all trades style of play.

It seems that the dev team believes that in the case of healing, it should actually be reversed. Currently, and more so after 3.2, the pure healing class should be the jack of all trades where as the hybrid classes that would typically fill this role should be able to be pure healers, pure dps', or in the case of paladins and druids pure tanks.

That being the case, if I wanted to be a healer, what's the benefit of being a priest in the eyes of the development team? After all, I would be better suited as a hybrid, would I not?

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Q u o t e:

I don't have a satisfactory answer for you to be honest. The way the Q&A's are developed is complicated. That question wasn't intentionally skipped. If you feel that you have a really good sense of the most important frequently-asked questions, you're welcome to provide me with a list, Naphomci. If the community seems to agree that your data accurately summarizes the priest community's questions, I'll take as many of your questions as I can. Just to be clear, I'm being completely sincere about that.

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I think more than anything else, this is the attitude that priests need to be seeing right now. I played a priest in vanilla, quit at the beginning of TBC due to the priest changes then. Cam back and rerolled a paladin. Rerolled a NEW priest for Wrath, and am now waiting with much trepidation over whether I'm going to reroll another class again, or whether the class that I originally love and know so well is going to get some serious examination.

This Q&A and the unofficial shadow Q&A both fell short of fulfilling that desire. I *want* to play a priest. I really do. But I also want to have fun. And, I'm sorry, but it's really just not any fun getting treated like you're garbage to a raid of equally skilled players because you're always in the last 5 out of the 15 DPS on the meter. It wouldn't be so bad if we had much more utility that benefited the raid. Unfortunately, nearly all of that utility has been doled out to other classes.

What do you think about that aspect of play of a shadow priest? We used to have much more utility. Now, with the 'bring the player, not the class' mentality (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) shadow priests have found that the utility they were once gods of has been doled out, without a DPS increase to equalize the situation.

Would it be feasible to see more utility incorporated in the future if the DPS is not going to be increased?

Also, that answer for Dispersion really was totally weak. We really don't have a better place to put that talent point and spending it is better than not. No, really.

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Q u o t e:


I like your choice of gems. Instead of spirit (which they nerfed) you used int. Was that a calculated choice for mana regen or just for the increase of mana?

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I think i still have some spirit gems floating around to make use of blue socket bonuses etc, I mainly raid as holy and meh the difference between the sp/spirit and sp/mp5 gems are marginal at best at the moment.

Int makes you smarter! :P i've always been a fan of int/sp gems both are valuable stats to disc or holy, yes i could gem for more throughput but I like my inflated mana pool and it directly works with replenishment.