Class Feedback: Priest

This weeks post is a response to the Blizzard's request for feedback on classes to give them ideas as what to look for in terms of changes and adjustments for a future game update. While they didn't give a specific point in time I'm sure they are looking beyond 4.3 and probably in WoW 5.0.

The priest threads can be found at EU / US

What type of content do you focus on? [PvE/PvP/Both]
Both but more focused on PvE than PvP.

If PvE, what type of PvE? [Heroics/Raids/Other]
Normal 10 man raids as a Disc or Holy priest.

If PvP, what type of PvP? [Arenas, BGs, Rated BGs]
Mainly BGs.

What are your biggest quality-of-life issues? For instance, no longer requiring ammo could be considered a quality-of-life improvement for hunters.
Out of combat res needing too much mana and having a 30 yard range on Resurrection when other classes get a 40 yard range.

Rebuffing Inner Fire/Inner Will after deaths, particularly in PvP is annoying. They should be stances and Shadow spec should add 2 more stances Inner Fire (Shadow) and Inner Will (Shadow) casting Holy spells when in the Shadow version of the stance should swap Shadow Priests into the basic stance.

Enable Circle of Healing to trigger Chakra: Sanctuary.

What makes playing your class more fun?
For me simply being a priest makes it more fun. The main reasons for this are we are an extremely flexible class and have no major weaknesses. Spells like Archangel, Guardian Spirit, Power Infusion and Leap of Faith make the hard leveling (well it was back in Vanilla!) worth the effort

What makes playing your class less fun?
Weak DPS output as Holy and Discipline make questing in areas with high respawn rates difficult at best impossible at most other times. The worst areas in Cataclysm have been Tol Barad and the Molten Front cos them mobs hit hard on a clothie who takes 15 seconds or more to kill 1 mob and have to run if you get 3 mobs beating up on you. During periods when I have wanted to do the quests in these areas for a prolonged time (rep/gear grind) I have had to swap my secondary spec to Shadow.

How do you feel about your “rotation”? (Rotation is the accepted order in which abilities are used to maximum efficiency.)
For Holy/Disc specs our LACK of rotation is awesome. Sure there are haste benefits from Borrowed Time and Serendipity but that hardly constitutes a rotation.

The Shadow rotation is pretty much unchanged since the days of TBC, it could do with being refreshed.

What’s on your wish list for your class?
A talent that both Holy and Disc priests can get to make Divine Hymn and Hymn of Hope a 3 minute cooldown to give a raid wide powerful mass heal.

Make Power Word: Barrier/Holy Word: Sanctuary targetable on a player rather than a ground spot.

Improve the power or speed of Heal (see below for why).

Restore some of the power of Power Word: Shield, right now its too expensive to cast on many people and lasts too short a time to make a return as the spam spell it was during Wrath and ICC particularly. By increasing its duration OR reducing its mana cost it would enable Disc priests to use it more frequently than they do. Currently I use this as much in Holy spec as I do in Disc spec despite the fact that is as more powerful and procs Rapture.

Add extra functionality to Atonement, the randomness of who it heals makes it risky as a tank healing strategy as it can choose a DPS over the tank if their health is lower. A solution could be to designate a preferred target and always direct a set percentage of the Atonement heal to that target similar to Beacon of Light.

Holy Nova, needs some love. the mana cost is too high and the healing output too low to make it a viable group heal. The solutions are to up the damage and healing (or have it heal more than 5 people) OR make it very mana efficient.

What spells do you use the least?
As of 4.2 the Heal spell is pretty much useless and where I was casting it in 4.1 I now use Flash Heal instead, raid mobs now hit too hard on tanks with too big a hit pool for a spell that even with 8,000+ spell power heals for less than 10,000 hit points. As an example Beth'Tilac hits my tank for around 50,000 damage using only heal I take 11 seconds to heal that back, if I don't crit and "only" 6.5 seconds if all crit. That relies a lot on the tank not taking any more big hits during that time to stand a hope of not losing the tank.

Mind Soothe is also a pretty useless spell, it really needs some additional utility, maybe some form of single target threat drop, not that I can see why a healer would need that as Fade is also very rarely used (and you need to look at your tanks/DPS if you need to use that a lot) and the only other use I can think of is to be the same as Soothe/Tranq Shot/Shiv functionality