Priest Class Blog Information

The second class blog has been posted, this time on Priests.

As always with Priest posts, I'll remind anyone reading this that it's the class I play the least, so I might miss some nuances here and there.

Holy:

The general goal is to focus on purity and massive heals. The Chakra system is gone, and instead you'll be using various Holy Word spells that are miraculous, powerful abilities with significant cooldowns that can be reduced by using other spells (or at least one of them can.) You won't have any Shadow abilities, but you'll have a couple of Holy damage abilities for soloing or if your group/raid doesn't need as much healing.

Heal, Flash Heal, Prayer of Mending, and Renew all look about the same. Prayer of Healing looks like a player-targeted AoE heal (or at least a multi-target heal, as there's a target cap.)

Holy Word: Serenity is a super-powered heal on a 1 min cooldown. Holy Word: Sanctity is a big ground-targeted AoE heal, also with a minute cooldown.

Serendipity is a passive that reduces the cooldown on Holy Word: Serenity by 6 seconds when you use Heal or Flash Heal. It reduces the CD on HW: Sanctity by 6 seconds when you cast Prayer of Healing or Prayer of Mending, and it reduces the CD on HW: Chastise when you cast Smite or Holy Fire. So it looks like you'll be using those Holy Word spells a lot more frequently than the 1 minute they're supposedly limited by.

Mastery is Echo of Light, which adds a HOT to all direct heals.

Sample Talent: Apotheosis:

3 min CD, Enter a pure Holy form for 30 sec, increasing the effects of Serendipity by 200%. So, lots of Holy Word spells.

Shadow:

Well, Blizzard is doing them out of order, and it kind of makes sense this time. Shadow is getting a far more explicit connection to the Old Gods. Instead of Mana or Shadow Orbs, (I'm assuming the latter,) Shadow will use Insanity as a resource. Though it's almost less of a resource than a kind of indicator of where they're at. Shadow also does not use any Holy spells now, but still has Power Word: Shield and the new Shadowmend to keep themselves aloft and help out the group. It really looks like Shadow Priests are going to be all about going insane and hopefully staying there.

Most of your spells will build Insanity until you hit 100, at which point your Shadowform become Voidform, which increases your damage significantly and transforms some of your spells. You'll start losing Insanity faster and faster, so you can't keep it up indefinitely, but the goal is to keep Insanity up as long as you can. You'll gain 2% Haste every second while in Voidform, but once Insanity gets back to 0, you drop out - however, you'll keep your highest haste buff for 20 seconds, but not the 30% boost to shadow damage.

Mind Flay remains, but transforms into Void Flay in Voidform, which extends the duration of Shadow Word: Pain by 3 seconds.

Mind Blast generates 15 Insanity and deals lots of damage on a 9-sec CD. In Voidform, it becomes Void Blast, getting a 4.5 sec CD and extending the duration on Vampiric Touch by 3 sec.

Vampiric Touch heals you for a percentage of the damage dealt and generates 3 Insanity per tick. If it's dispelled, the dispeller flees in terror.

Shadow Word: Pain now generates 3 Insanity and has a 10% chance to reset the cooldown on Mind Blast (no word on whether it makes it instant.)

The new Mastery is Madness, which increases the damage and Insanity generation of Mind Blast, Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain, and Shadow Word: Death.

Sample Talent: Oblivion (wow, Priests are getting some pretty iconic talent names.)

2 min CD, instantly gets you to 100 Insanity. I imagine this would be great to use right as your haste buff is about to fall off from having gone regrettably sane.

Discipline:

They are focusing far more on Atonement as the defining trait of Discipline. Disc Priests use a mix of Light and Shadow spells, giving them a more distinct look from Holy, and while they're still going to be considered healers, they do a significant amount of damage.

First off, new Atonement: It's a passive that makes Plea (a new spell,) PW: Shield, and Shadow Mend apply the Atonement effect to the target for 15 seconds. When you deal damage to an enemy with a spell, you instantly heal all targets marked with Atonement for 50% of the damage done. Mind you, this does not split. The more targets marked with Atonement, the more healing you do.

New Mastery: Absolution, which increases the healing effect of Atonement.

Plea is a new cheap, instant heal that seems to be more about applying Atonement to the target.

Shadow Mend heals the target for a large amount, but the target will start taking minor damage every second until they have taken 50% of the heal's amount (not sure if this includes damage from other sources) or they've left combat.

PW: Shield has no changes I can see, unless they've gotten rid of Weakened Soul, though I doubt that. Power Word: Radiance hits a target and 5 nearby allies, applying Atonement to them for 50% of its normal duration.

For damage to power Atonement, you have Smite, Mind Blast, Penance (which looks to be pure damage now and can be cast on the move,) and Shadow Word: Pain (which I assume replaces Holy Fire.)

Revelation is a passive that causes Smite and Mind Blast to have a 30% chance to reset the CD on Penance.

Sample Talent: Grace

A passive that increases non-Atonement healing by 30% on targets with Atonement, which seems like a good option if you want to play a more conventional healer.

Priest Analysis:

I don't really play healers, but these do look like some much more focused ideas for the specs. I think Shadow is oddly less different than I expected it to be, but maybe I need to play with it to get an idea of how it has changed. Holy seems pretty similar to how it is, but I kind of dig the way that Discipline is basically using half Shadow, half Holy spells. Should make them look a whole lot different from Holy Priests.

We'll be getting Mages and Paladins later today.