Priest Concern Summary

[MongoJerry]

Guess nobody really cares about balance, anymore?  And tell me, exactly what 2 player combination could take care of the priest/warrior duo if this happened?  You complain that Paladins are sick in PvP because they can heal while surviving ... then want the same exact thing for yourself?

No one would be happier than I if paladins had their shields removed (and *then* I wouldn't have a problem if Paladins had their dps increased), but since that's not likely going to happen, we might as well let the Horde have an opportunity to give the Alliance a taste of their own medicine. And anyway, priests are supposed to be the best healers in the game, right? That's certainly not the case as it stands now in PvP.

If Greater Heal becomes the spell of choice, the tank's life will become much spikier.  Spikes are dangerous.

Yep. Tank health would have to be a lot higher than it is for greater heal to become viable.

Ravenholdt has been in the game, unfinished, since 1.2 (I think).  When Blizzard put in the class specific Sunken Temple quests, they added 4 classes (1.7) and 4 classes (1.8).  But wait, there's 9 classes, right?  Druids got screwed.  Druid's last quest is at level 16.

Almost all classes need more class quests. Saying that priests need class quests does not mean that all other classes are hunky-dory. Ironically, warlocks are one of the most buggy broken incomplete classes and yet they have a lot of class quests. Go figure.

Your AoE fear may not be that reliable, but neither is any other escape mechanism in the game. Vanish gets removed/dotted, CC gets broken by trinkets/damage, Sprint gets slowed, Feign Death is just /laughed at ...

Quark, the problem is that Psychic Scream is a priest's *only* escape mechanism and has a 30-second cooldown. A rogue might be prevented from vanishing, but he or she can still stun, gouge, blind, and/or sprint away. A hunter's Feign Death might not be very useful as an escape mechanism in PvP, but they can still stun, slow, wing clip, freeze or frost trap, and/or aspect of the cheetah away. A mage's polymorph might get broken, but a mage can immediately recast sheep or use frost nova, chill effects of frost spells, and blink away. Priests get Psychic Scream and that's it. When it gets dispelled or as what happens with warriors the player is immune from the start, the priest has to wait 30 seconds (26 with shadow talents) before it can be used again. Naturally, the priest will be long dead by then.

I'd like to see this "master of crowd control" quote people keep talking about. Priests were stripped of their CC for a reason.

Lissa explained all this well, and the description of priests being able to bend the will of others survived for a long time through the beta, even as all such priest abilities were chipped or nerfed away. The sentence that describes this now in the priest description has been altered dramatically.

What bugs me about the priest's crowd control faculties is that largely they aren't allowed to use them in PvE situations. Psychic Scream tends to bring adds. Mind Control, while fun, breaks early and often and generates so much hate that unless the rest of the group has good awareness and takes strong measures to protect the priest, a priest death or even a party wipe depending on the situation and group composition is likely. What's more, a priest can't do their healing or dispelling while mind controling something, so groups often wouldn't want the priest mind controling a mob even if the MC never broke. Mind Soothe is largely meaningless now. I used it once in the last month to help someone get past the ogres in LBRS just to speed things along, and avoided all of one fight in the process.

So, priests are supposed to be able to bend and shape the minds of our enemies and yet for most practical situations, we aren't allowed to do any of it. I'd like to see the holy/disc priest get some form of crowd control that would allow them to do something other than be a heal bot and get something in exchange for giving up all the fancy toys in the shadow tree. You'll never hear me saying that shadow priests should be made stronger (well, itemization needs to be changed to accommodate them, but that's it). I would just like the holy/disc priests to get some useful "not just healing" tools to use.