The Blood Elf Shadow Priest's Conundrum

Way back in Burning Crusade, an altoholic already (even having only played for a few months!) I decided that I would need to create both a Draenei and Blood Elf character. Not having a Priest, I went with that for my Sin'dorei. He's never been a high priority character (though I've enjoyed the Insanity mechanic introduced in Legion, which has bumped him up from his typical last place position,) but he's been there for over ten years.

As I've never been much of a healer, he's been Shadow most of this time, and with little lore dissonance - one could easily imagine that after experiencing the horror of the Scourge's assault on Quel'thalas, he decided that dark powers would be required to defend himself, and there is great power within the Void.

In Battle for Azeroth, the Alliance will be getting Void Elves as a playable race. For the first time in WoW's history, we're going to see a group of former members of the Horde joining the Alliance, rather than the other way around (though to be fair, the Horde group they come from had itself defected to the Horde from the Alliance, meaning a Void Elf character could have fought for the Alliance already during the Second War.)

The backstory on Void Elves, to the extent that datamining and such is reliable, suggests that the Void Elves were banished from Quel'thalas for communing with the Void. While Lor'themar and his regime will not tolerate this activity, Alleria Windrunner has mastery over this kind of volatile magic, and assists Alliance heroes in rescuing the Void Elves and recruiting them into the Alliance.

But what about my Priest?

I mean, if anyone has been communing with the Shadow, it's by Priest, who takes on a shadowform not unlike Alleria's at the end of Seat of the Triumvirate and clearly has a strong connection to the void. How is he not being exiled? Is it because, as High Priest of the Conclave (you know, for his individual character canon) he has proven himself too valuable, and that the Ren'dorei are meddling in things that they're not strong enough to manage? They do require Alleria and an Alliance hero to rescue them from the beings whose attention they draw - a position my Shadow Priest has never put himself in.

It's definitely possible that this is simply a case of Story and Gameplay Segregation - perhaps canonically, only the Forsaken have a large number of Shadow Priests, and in other cultures, you either go Holy or Disc or you pretend to do so.

However, I think there's another alternative:

Priests have a somewhat unexplored theme of being the Mind over Matter class. It's most obvious with Shadow Priests, given all their Mind-prefixed abilities (in D&D, while a Death Knight or a Warlock would both trade a bit in Necrotic damage, a Shadow Priest would be almost entirely Psychic.) But there are a few things even among the healers that seem to be mentally-themed. Think a Discipline Priest's Pain Suppression - you're not actually preventing physical harm, but you're making it so that the subject merely doesn't feel as much pain, which somehow keeps them alive. Even the theme of Power Word spells suggest that presenting the idea is enough to have a magical effect.

And in a way, that ties into the idea of Priests being disciplined minds: when it comes to magic, Faith is a kind of willpower - holding onto the idea of the miraculous so hard that it actually winds up coming true.

I've suggested way back when they introduced Insanity as a resource for Shadow Priests that it's sort of shorthand for a more complex idea: a Shadow Priest is building up and holding onto the paradoxical notion that there is power in an absence of things - that the Void, which by definition is completely empty, nevertheless has beings and power within it. The greater the power drawn from the void, the greater the paradox, and thus I think that staying in Void form is more and more mentally taxing as more power is siphoned off until the Priest must relent, reverting to a more stable and static Shadowform.

While the form is changed, like most priest spells, it is probably based within the mind - the Shadow Priest does not undergo any permanent physical change. In fact, the Shadowform itself may in fact by a kind of psychic projection - an illusion so real that it might as well be, even though on some fundamental, objective level of reality, the Shadow Priest is still a being of flesh and blood.

And that's where we get the opening to distinguish Void Elves from Shadow Priests.

Void Elves are not all Shadow Priests. They can be, and they are probably very well suited to the role. But they can also be anything from Mages to Monks to Warriors. A Void Elf Fury Warrior is probably not thinking very much about the mysteries of the Void when she charges into battle, painted in her enemy's blood and swinging a pair of massive greatswords. But she does carry the Void with her.

I would suspect that while a Shadow Priest engages with the Void on an intellectual level, the Void Elves have done so on a physical level. What they sought to accomplish with their experiments, we don't know, but they are changed in a physiological sense. Ultimately, my Shadow Priest can drop his void form, change his practices, and become a Holy Priest, who is probably not going to worry anyone in Silvermoon.

But that aforementioned hypothetical Void Elf Warrior is always going to be just that. They are tainted with the Void to a greater degree than the Blood Elves were ever tainted with Fel.

A class is what you choose to do. Race, in WoW, is who you are. One of these, lorewise, can be changed. The other can't (well, perhaps we should say that changes like this are a one-way street.)

Battlelord, Huntmaster, Grandmaster, and High Priest Mount Quests

Oh right, I was doing a quick rundown of these quests.

With only the Druid to go (waiting on world quests now) I have, over the past few weeks, gotten the mounts for Warriors, Hunters, Monks, and Priests. Let's take a look!

Battlelord:

This is one of the simpler ones, though like the Mage, it involves a couple of somewhat tricky combat encounters. You need to make ample use of mobility and survival abilities (and interrupts!) to make it through yet another trial that Odyn is putting you through (seriously Odyn, you're like an emotionally distant father for whom nothing is ever good enough.)

The mount itself is a much more up-to-date Proto-drake model that changes colors based on your spec. Arms gets red, Fury black, and Protection purple (not sure why they chose those. I'd think Red was the obvious fury color, and given that Arms has a partially Old-God-corrupted sword and Protection has a shield made from a scale of Deathwings, it seems really obvious that they should get purple and black, respectively. But oh well.)

Huntmaster:

This actually involves Odyn as well, and sends you to the Fields of the Eternal Hunt, where you track down various beasts of legend (using your Beast hunter tracking you can easily find tracks or leavings of various kinds.) Ultimately in culminates in the discovery of the ancient Wolfhawk spirit, and you get a mount of that kind.

The Wolfhawk mount comes in various colors that, like the Paladin mounts, require you to fill out the upgraded artifact tree to get. However, Beastmasters don't get a recolor but instead get the ability to tame a wolfhawk pet (I'm not sure yet where to find these guys, but I'm a ways from finishing the artifact.)

Grandmaster:

Monks get a relatively lengthy quest chain taking you through a fair amount of Kun Lai Summit at the behest of Master Bu as you attempt to track down Ban-Lu, a son of Xuen's who has served many Grandmasters through the past.

Ban-Lu does not change appearance and there are not variants on that appearance, but the baseline's very pretty. Additionally, Ban-Lu will speak with you occasionally as you ride him, which is kind of fun.

High Priest:

Brann and Magni contact you when you start the mount quest, taking you to a long-lost Titan vault that contains the last three remnants of the Seekers, a kind of Owl/Gryphon hybrid that apparently once served the Titans. As often happens, you presence activates some sort of defense protocol, and so you have to fight off waves of Titanforged (Watchers, Golems, and Earthen) before you take the Seekers into your custody.

There's one seeker for each spec, with the "void-corrupted" one going to Shadow Priests. Like the Warrior, Death Knight, Shaman, and Mage mounts, this changes automatically based on spec.

Throwing Shade (and Void) in 7.0

So first the big caveat I always feel I should start with when I talk about Priests. Of the eleven classes in WoW, Priests are the one I have played the least. I got mine to level 100 and then more or less dropped him. But I did get him to 100, so I have some sense of how the class works.

Shadow is one of the specs that has gotten a new resource system, and the spec's connection to the Old Gods, which has only been strongly implied before now, has become basically explicit. So let's get into things.

Insane in the Membrane:

Much like Balance Druids and DPS Shamans, Shadow Priests still have a mana bar, but it has been bumped down under the main resource bar to make way for Insanity. Yes, Shadow Priests channel their own craziness to attack their foes. Insanity is a very unusual resource in that almost all of your abilities generate it, rather than spending it. In a sense, it works a little like Demonic Fury did for Demonology Warlocks in Mists and Warlords, but not exactly. We'll get into its mechanics in a moment. It's represented by a bluish-lavender bar under your health bar.

Shadowform Gone/Always On:

Shadow Priests will now always be in Shadowform, meaning that in a sense, the ability no longer exists. However, cosmetically, Shadow Priests will be darkened and translucent at all times. I also believe that the more Insanity you have, the darker the effect will be.

Keeping the flavor of being unable to cast Light-based spells, you now have a new heal called Shadow Mend (something we've been seeing enemy NPCs cast since vanilla,) which heals for a large amount and then, if you're in combat, puts a DoT on you until you've taken half of the heal's amount in damage (from any source - the DoT itself or external damage.) Outside of combat, this is just a straight heal, and there's a talent early on that changes the DoT component to a HoT. You also have Power Word: Shield, which counts as an in-between, Discipline-type spell.

Core Rotation Looks Similar:

Many of your core spells are going to be pretty much the same. You'll still be DoT-ing up your targets with Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch, and you'll still be hitting them with Mind Blast and filling in with Mind Flay (which can be replaced with Mind Spike with a talent at level 100.) All of these abilities generate Insanity, with the DoTs doing it on cast and every time they tick. Your little Shadowfiend summon is still a DPS cooldown, and it will now generate Insanity for you each time it hits the target.

Goodbye, Shadow Orbs, Hello, Void Form:

Shadow Orbs are gone, as is Devouring Plague. You're no longer focused on building to this major DoT. Instead, you'll try to get your Insanity to 100, at which point you'll hit Void Eruption. Void Eruption deals damage to any targets affected by your DoTs and then puts you in Void Form.

Void Form will begin to consume your Insanity. It starts off slow, but the longer you're in the form, the faster it will drain away the resource. The more spells you're able to cast and the more DoTs you're able to maintain, the more Insanity you'll generate to maintain the form. When your Insanity hits zero, you'll exit the form.

Void Form does a couple things. First, it increases your damage dealt by 20%. Your Mind Blast also has its cooldown reduced by 3 seconds. You gain 1% Haste every second while it's active, and after Void Form ends, you retain that stacked haste buff for one minute.

Finally, Void Form transforms Void Eruption into Void Bolt, which is instant-cast, dealing damage to the target and refreshing the duration of your two major DoTs.

The New Shadow:

So while it's not as radically different as, say, Survival Hunters, Shadow does work pretty differently. You're going to want to maximize Insanity generation both in and out of Void Form, but particularly within it, to try to get that Lingering Insanity haste buff to stack as high as possible. If you manage to stay in Void Form long enough (I want to say 15 haste stacks) you'll even start to sprout tentacles, which is pretty awesome/freaky.

So that's the basic gist of the changes to Shadow. And as we say in the Void, Iä! Iä! N'Zoth fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah N'zoth Ny'alotha wgah'nagl fhtagn!

EDIT: I also feel I need to draw attention to the most ridiculous talent in the entire game: Surrender to Madness. This is a highly impractical, but potentially powerful niche ability that is the only ability in the game (now that Divine Intervention has been gone for a while) that actually kills you.

The ability has a 10-minute cooldown (I'm currently waiting on its cooldown to switch to a different talent on the PTR) and causes your Insanity-generating abilities to generate 200% more Insanity (so three times their normal amount.) It also allows you to cast while moving until you exit Void Form (I actually don't know what happens if you cast it before using Void Form, or what happens if you never enter Void Form while it's active - though if you didn't, what would be the point of the ability?) after which you die. Horribly.

Dying Horribly means that you can not be battle-rezzed. You get this insane burst of damage and you can maintain the Void Form buff for a good long time (I had like four or five tentacles waving around me by the end) but you better be near the end of the fight, because you are not getting back into it. The debuff on you when you're dead lasts a couple minutes, so theoretically if you used this early on, you might be able to get rezzed later on, but I can't imagine being dead for several minutes of the fight is a DPS gain. I think the only really practical time to use this is if you have a really tough burn phase at the end of a boss fight - something like Professor Putricide, where you just need to pour out as much damage as you possibly can or the raid will get overwhelmed. During that period, a Shadow Priest who surrenders to madness might be able to very significantly increase the damage he or she causes, and once the boss is dead, your buddies can just rez you when it's time to distribute loot.

Breaking Down the New Discipline

Discipline Priests struggled in WoW's early days to distinguish themselves from Holy - the more go-to, classical healing spec for Priests. Priests were (and are) the only class to have multiple healing specs, and in general, the distinction has been more one of focus than anything really radical. Holy gets more straight-up healing spells, while Disc has focused on damage absorption.

But this has been a big problem. Having a shield that prevents damage instead of a heal that retroactively gives you health back is obviously better - it essentially makes your target seem as if they have higher max health than they do.

In Cataclysm (possibly as early as Wrath, though I don't remember it then,) they started playing with an idea with Discipline called Atonement - allowing the Priest to damage enemies and thereby create additional healing effects to help one's allies.

In Legion, Discipline is diving deep into this theme, becoming almost a hybrid of a damage-dealer and a healer. Given the removal of Mistweaving's Crane Style (Fistweaving,) it's kind of surprising that they're embracing it so whole-heartedly with Discipline, but my guess is that, thanks to the existence of Holy Priests, Priest players are not totally screwed if they want to heal but Discipline winds up being a train wreck.

They're even embracing this hybridization in terms of lore and flavor. Discipline will use both Holy and Shadow spells to heal and harm.

But in terms of gameplay, they're reining in a lot of the "smart heals" that made Atonement healing perhaps too easy. You're still going to be able to damage enemies to heal your friends, but you'll need to keep close watch on those friends to make sure that they get the benefits.

A big question for the spec is what the ratio will be. After all, a healer who also does half the damage of a DPS is going to be in high demand, but a healer who does half the healing of another healer is not. In a raid, this kind of half-and-half quality actually seems really easy to use - if your raid usually runs with two or three healers, you can run with two and a half! But for dungeons, where there's just one healer in the group, will Discipline Priests find themselves benched or forced to go Holy (or Shadow and run as DPS?)

I've been adding a little caveat to all these breakdowns, but honestly, even with a new class and some totally redesigned specs, this could be the biggest example of "expect changes and iteration."

So what have we got? (Also, I think I'll include base mana percentage costs with healing specs, as that's a bit more important for them.)

Smite costs 1% mana with a 2-second cast time, dealing Holy damage to the target.

Shadow Word: Pain costs 2% mana and deals a little bit of Shadow damage up front, with a lot of additional Shadow damage over 18 seconds.

Power Word: Shield costs 3.5% mana, creating a damage absorption shield that also prevents spell pushback that lasts a maximum of 15 seconds.

Plea costs 1.2% mana, and is an instant-cast heal that heals the target for a modest amount.

Penance costs 2.5% mana and is channeled over 2 seconds, dealing heavy Holy damage to the target. This can be channeled while moving.

Mind Blast costs 4% mana and has a cast time of 1.5 seconds, dealing high Shadow damage to the target.

Shadow Mend costs 3% mana and has a 1.5 second cast time. It heals the target for a massive amount, but then deals 10% of the amount healed as Shadow damage to the target every second until the target has taken 50% of the heal from all sources (so without any other damage source, 5 seconds) or if the target is no longer in combat.

Revelation is a passive, giving Smite and Mind Blast a 30% chance to reset the cool down on Penance.

Atonement is a crucial passive, causing Plea, Power Word: Shield, and Shadow Mend to apply the Atonement buff on the target for 15 seconds. All targets with Atonement will each be healed for 50% of all spell damage you deal.

Shadowfiend is on a 3-minute cool down, summoning a fiend to attack the target for 12 seconds.

Power Word: Radiance costs 7% mana and has a 2.5-second cast time, healing the target and allies near them for a modest amount and applying Atonement to them for 50% of the normal duration.

Rapture is a 1.5 minute cool down, removing the cool down on Power Word: Shield for 8 seconds.

Pain Suppression costs 1.6% mana and has a 3-minute cool down, reducing the damage the target takes by 40% for 8 seconds. This is cartable while stunned.

Power Word: Barrier costs 6.2% mana with a 3-minute cool down, and reduces all damage taken in the targeted area by 25% for 10 seconds, also preventing spell pushback.

Mastery: Absolution increases the healing done by Atonement.

Obviously healers don't typically have a "rotation" exactly. But given that there's a big DPS component to this spec, you could almost act as if there were one. Clearly you'll want to maintain Atonement on any targets your responsible for healing. Plea is clearly the cheapest and quickest way to do this, though you'll probably want to use Power Word: Shield on cool down. Shadow Mend's damage downside of course doesn't matter much when you've got a tank taking boss-damage, as it will be overwritten before the DoT component can do much. In terms of Atonement healing, you'll probably want to maintain Shadow Word: Pain on a few targets to get constant ticking heals. Penance will provide a nice burst of healing/damage, while you can kind of titrate healing by using either Mind Blast for heavier damage or Smite for lighter damage. Power Word: Radiance is clearly meant for periods of heavy raid damage, and the cool downs have rather obvious applications.

Breaking Down the Insanity of the New Shadow

Shadow Priests have always hinted at being connected to the same powers as the Eldritch Old Gods, and things like Void Tendrils or really just the fact that they assault their enemies' minds has played into that. That theme of craziness at the center of their gameplay is getting put front and center, with new resource that replaces Mana called Insanity. There are also no longer any Shadow Orbs.

Insanity is actually pretty odd as a resource, as you have a lot more control over how you generate it than how you spend it. Your spells will generate different amounts of Insanity until you hit 100. Then, you will automatically shift into Void Form (Shadowform will be always-on while you're specced Shadow.) Void Form reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 3 seconds (to 6) and increases all Shadow damage you deal by 30%.

While in Void Form, you'll get 1% Haste every second, and this buff will last for 20 seconds after Void Form ends.

While in Void Form, you'll lose Insanity at a faster and faster rate over time, until it becomes impossible to maintain it and you'll drop back down into the old Shadowform, but of course, with that 20 second buff to your haste. You'll still be able to generate Insanity while in Void Form, but it will drain faster and faster.

Many of your spells should look pretty familiar.

Shadow Word: Pain remains an 18-second DOT the does Shadow damage.

Mind Flay remains your channeled filler spell, dealing Shadow damage and generating 10.02 (weird number) Insanity on its full duration.

Mind Blast looks largely the same as well, with a 9 second cooldown and a 1.5 second cast time, dealing a bunch of Shadow damage and then generating 20 Insanity.

Void Bolt is a new spell, instant on a 6-second cooldown that deals shadow damage to the target and extends the duration of Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch on the target by 3 seconds. This can only be cast in Void Form.

Vampiric Touch is slightly different, a DoT that heals you for all the damage it deals, with a 1.5 second cast time and a 24-second duration. If dispelled, the dispeller flees in horror for 3 seconds.

Shadow Mend is a heal that costs 10 Insanity if you have it (though if you have none, it costs nothing,) healing the target for a large amount but then placing a DoT on you that deal half the damage it had healed for over five seconds, though if you leave combat, the DoT will end (and presumably not even start if you're already out of combat when you cast it.)

Shadow Word: Death is instant on an 8-second cooldown, only usable on targets below 20%, and does a bunch of Shadow damage. If you kill the target with it, you gain 30 Insanity.

Shadowy Apparitions remains a passive that causes you Shadow Word: Pain crits to summon an apparition that flies toward the enemy and deals shadow damage.

Shadow Fiend is a 3-min cooldown that summons a... wait for it... shadowy fiend to attack your target for 12 seconds.

Mind Sear remains as a channeled AoE and seems more or less unchanged, but it does not appear to generate any Insanity.

There are a number of utility spells as well, but that's it for rotational ones.

So, before talents or artifact traits, the rotation seems not too different to where we were before:

1. Keep up Shadow Word: Pain
2. Keep up Vampiric Touch
3. Mind Blast on cooldown.
4. Mind Flay to fill gaps.

When you're Insane, you can alter it a bit, using Void Bolt about once every three seconds to keep the DoTs running and then try to keep generating as much Insanity as you can to get that buff to stack up. I don't know that there's even a cap on the buff.

While it's certainly different, given the lack of Devouring Plague, most of the bones of the rotation seem pretty untouched.

Gladiator's Resolve, Fistweaving, and Discipline

Gladiator's Resolve allows Protection Warriors to switch to DPS without changing their gear (well, unless they really want to maximize the best secondary stats.) It's an interesting experiment and one that allowed for an unprecedented playstyle - a melee dps that uses a shield.

But it's going away. The quasi-spec was certainly an interesting idea, but I always suspected that they would either have to give Warriors a fourth spec to allow it (something they only gave Druids out of sheer necessity) or they would have to give all tanks some kind of dps capability. They've opted to just remove it, which will upset a lot of people I'm sure.

Converting a tank spec to a DPS one consists of two challenges - buffing damage and reducing survivability.

Tanks already do damage enemies in order to generate threat, and as a result, tank damage needs to be balanced at a level that is proportional to DPS damage. Thus, it's not that big a challenge to simply add a coefficient when in "DPS mode" to make a tank spec work as DPS. (Ok, it's obviously more complex than that, but not substantially different from balancing between DPS specs.)

There's also the need to scale back some of the survivability. After all, if a tank-as-dps spec could take just as much punishment as a tank-as-tank spec, why would you ever take the latter? Or normal melee DPS?

But honestly I think that the main reason behind this is more about a return to fundamentals. They're doing this with all specs, trying to focus on the core of the spec's identity, and having this kind of dangling DPS quasi-spec off to the side for Protection was a bit odd.

Sort of in a similar vein, Mistweaver Monks will no longer be able to heal through their melee strikes.

Looking at Mistweavers in a vacuum, this makes tons of sense. If a healer can heal sufficiently while also contributing as much DPS as a tank or even a bit less, it clearly has a big edge over other healers. Essentially, you're in this place where balance is impossible. You either become far too overpowered - healing just as well as other healers but also contributing DPS, and thus making all other healers obsolete - or your healing is handicapped to make room for the benefit your damage brings. In a raid with four or five healers, that might be ok, because you could split the difference and be the half-healer within your raid's roster of four-and-a-half. But in smaller content, particularly 5-player dungeons, where you are the only healer, how can you justify taking up that spot when you're going to be struggling to keep everyone up thanks to your handicapped heals?

The solution in Warlords was to give Mistweavers two stances - one to serve as a dedicated, classic healer standing in the back and tossing out healing spells, and the other to focus on "Fistweaving," which you could opt into if your group or raid didn't need quite as much healing.

But with this "starting again from the basics" approach, Blizzard has decided to simply make Mistweavers into straight-up healers. However, this isn't really getting back to how things were, because Mistweavers were originally designed specifically to be the "punch-to-heal" spec. In fact, I think this is a large contributor to people playing the spec (it was what finally got me to try out leveling a healer, though to be fair she never quite made it to the level cap, sitting at 88.)

Still, perhaps it's for the best. After all, a healing/dps hybrid spec is inherently kind of problematic.

What was that? Discipline Priests?

Oh crap.

So Discipline got an interesting mechanic starting, if I remember correctly, in Cataclysm. They could blast enemies with Smite and Holy Fire (finally giving those spells a use) and thus heal the party. It gave Discipline something to do if group/raid damage wasn't that much of a threat.

It was this Atonement effect that I believe really inspired the design of the Mistweaver Monk (which of course came in the following expansion.)

But Discipline's theme was more around absorption shields. Power Word: Shield was fundamental to the spec, and finally gave it a way to shine after the dominance of Holy in early WoW.

The problem is that those shields were way too powerful. Shield spells are inherently kind of over-powered. As long as the target is taking any significant damage, the shield will always be useful, and on top of that, until that shield breaks and the target starts taking real damage, everyone else's heals are useless.

So Discipline has been overpowered - partially thanks to our over-reliance on healing meters - and so Blizzard wants to move Disco priests away from that as their primary theme.

But once you take a holy-themed, cloth-wearing healer away from the one kind of heal that the other healing spec for the class doesn't use, you kind of paint yourself into a corner.

So Discipline is going whole-hog on this hybrid DPS/Healer thing. With all the problems I just described for Mistweavers.

As someone who doesn't really play healers, it obviously doesn't affect me that much, but I do really wonder how well this will work out, and if Blizzard might be forced to reconsider Disco again (yes, I like to call the spec disco.) They do seem to be designing this hybrid status as mandatory, which might make it somewhat easier to balance than Mistweavers. Still, it remains to be seen.

Honestly, I think this all would have been a lot easier if in 2004 they had made Priests like every other healing class, giving them one healing spec and then making Discipline into a kind of Inquisitor-type, casting holy spells from afar, with maybe more of a direct-damage theme counter to Shadow's DoT theme.

But that was 11 years ago. Then again, they did make Survival into a melee spec.

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.

Speaking of Big Changes: Discipline Priests

I'll preface this by pointing out that I really don't know healing. In about nine years of playing World of Warcraft, I've never taken a healer into a heroic dungeon or raid. I figured out that I liked being a tank very early on, and of course almost everyone likes playing DPS (if not waiting in DPS queues) but healing?

I'm no expert.

Priests are the only class in the game to have more than one healing spec, and the two of these specs have always had a weird and perhaps asymmetrical relationship.

Holy is clearly the most iconic healing spec. Holy's theme is "you are a healer." It traces its roots back to, like, every healer in RPG history.

Discipline is weirder. For one, it's focused more on preventing damage with shields, which is basically either absurdly overpowered or cripplingly underpowered depending on subtle changes in development. But it's also the healing spec that always wanted to do some damage as well.

Priests have some damage spells, like Smite and Holy Fire, that were originally put in the game so that Priests could at least try to solo while leveling up in an era before they could dual-spec to Shadow. In Cataclysm, Discipline got Atonement (it may have been a Glyph at the time.) This allowed them to pump out damage and thereby heal their allies with some smart-targeting healing.

When Monks were introduced, Mistweavers were given a similar theme - being able to fight in melee like other Monks and keep the team alive as they did it. This is actually why Mistweavers are the only healing spec I've really spent any significant time working on, though I haven't broken out the second Monk since Warlords came out.

In a recent interview, one of the lead designers (I want to say Jay Allen Brack, and apologies if I spelled that wrong) said that they want Discipline to lean into this weird DPS/Healer dichotomy, hoping to make them 50% healer and 50% DPS.

That's pretty fascinating. And could be hell to balance.

The thing is, having a healer sacrifice healing for damage kind of works in a raid setting (at least one where your aptitude is not judged solely on meters.) People bring different ratios of healers and DPS all the time (especially in the flex-mode era,) so having a raid with two tanks, six and a half DPS and three and a half healers is fine. Tossing a Discipline Priest into a raid with these changes is arguably less of a problem than any other spec, as you know that you can't be upsetting the healer-to-DPS ratio all that badly.

Where I think this could become tricky is 5-player dungeons. A dungeon requires a tank and a healer, and unless the dungeon is no longer that dangerous due to gear or such, the group is going to need a full-fledged healer.

This is definitely something to keep an eye on. They could of course go the Mistweaver route they went in Warlords, creating two "modes" for them to either be a pure healer or a hybrid damage/healer. I haven't really been following Mistweavers this expansion, so I can't really say whether that was a success or not.

Now, if they want to give Discipline a damage-focused Gladiator's Resolve-style talent, that might work out just fine. The game doesn't really have a Holy-magic DPS caster, which could be cool (Exorcist's Resolve? That would be a cool name for it, even if Exo is a Paladin ability.)