WoW Priest Discussion - The Priest Class

I'm putting this up here for safekeeping. For those who play Wordl of Warcraft, even if you're not a priest, it's a must read, if only for the hilarity of it all.

WoW Priest Discussion -:

"Thanks for the time you spent examining the priest class.

We really appreciate being given an oversimplified explanation that our skills are viable when we have spent weeks giving detailed information about why they are not viable.

We gave you pages and pages of reasons, information, experience, and math in an effort to communicate the message that Spirit is not a very good stat in comparison to intellect. We got told that spirit is "working as intended". Thanks, being told that we are wrong about spirit really helped Devout suddenly not suck. Now that Fangtooth has spoken, I suddenly feel really good about being OOM all the time. Its sortof like I've reached nirvana. Being OOM really gives you a lot of freedom. I mean I can just jump around during fights and yell OOM while I use my new autoshoot wand. And if we wipe, I can just blame the person who pulled. Its really a load off my shoulders.

We gave you pages and pages of reasons, information, experience, and math in an effort to communicate the message that The Holy tree is not as good as either of our other two trees, and is also inferior to other classes (druid and shaman) Restoration trees. We got awesome changes to holy nova. Thanks, that really encourages us to spec something besides shadow. Maybe you should just give druids prayer of healing. Then at least we would be able to go shadowform without having to worry about healing. We aren't supposed to be worrying about healing our groups, are we blizzard? I mean, you gave us a great DPS talent tree... We weren't supposed to be healers, were we? I'm pretty sure we werent, but my groups seem to think otherwise. The often get a little upset when they see me throwing out nukes. "Whats the problem," I respond, wondering why they are upset. "We have a druid and a paladin, don't we?"

We gave you pages and pages of reasons, information, experience, and math in an effort to communicate the message that Fear needs to work against players if we are to have any measure of survivability in PvP combat. First you made an entire race immune to it. Then it got changed to break on damage. Then it got diminishing returns added. Now, every patch, you invent a new way for players to reactively break fear, which is our only effective defense. Thanks, that really makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside.

My experience in warsong gulch have been great. Its really cool, standing in the entrance to your own base, getting chain stunned by various stuns from tauren warriors and undead rogues. I't sure makes me glad that stuns have diminishing returns. I mean, there used to be classes that would AVOID me, because they didn't want to be feared. Thats just not healthy. Now that everyone is immune, I'm getting to socialize with all kinds of new and interesting people. I feel so loved when those four rogues and a shaman make a beeline straight for me. Its really cool that you gave me this great trinket, because every 5 minutes, I can break out of a stun and mash fear. Then the warrior uses Death Wish or Berzerker Rage, and continues to swing at me with his Arcanite Reaper. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to the day when warriors have 75 DPS weapons. And of course the UD rogue (I prefer to call them acupuncturists) is either already immune or breaks fear right away. If I'm lucky, I might be able to shield or renew myself before the two people stabbing me come back... which is really great because it gives the shaman who just walked past a good target to cast purge on. We wouldn't want those shamans to feel unneeded, would we?

To be honest, I don't even have Psychic Scream on my hotbar anymore. I replaced it with a /beg macro. There has been some debate as to which is more effective a survival tool. Some priests still argue that Psychic Scream is your best bet, but there is a growing movement toward the /beg macro. In both cases, the survival rate is about 5%. However, I went with /beg because it doesn't have a cooldown and costs slightly less mana. However, I am a little concerned that this new /beg tactic might be a bit overpowered. Perhaps you should consider making emotes trigger the global cooldown, or putting /beg on the same diminishing returns timer as Fear is. As it stands, Priests can chain together /beg with fear, and keep an enemy player immobilized with either fear or guilt for an almost indefinite period of time. This is of course, overpowered.

On the plus side, I'm really enjoying getting to know the Spirit Guide. He's quite an interesting person. He's an ex-priest, you know. He's holy, in fact. Every 30 seconds, he casts Holy Nova and rezzes all the dead priests who are huddled around him. As it turns out, he feels he helps groups more in his new job than he did in his old job. He's really glad you changed the cooldown on his holy nova, because now he can rez twice as often with it. He told me he's been seeing a lot more priests lately. He's a really great guy, I suggest you take the time to roll a priest so you can get to know him better.

I noticed now that you've nerfed Holy Nova and are satisfied with the severity of the nerf, you've moved on to your next task, buffing shamans. Thanks a lot for that one. No way us priests are gonna take that one as a huge slap in the face. No sir, not us. We'll be happy for them. Just like we were happy and not the LEAST bit jealous when you gave our cousins the mages their new spell, Mage Armor, which allows them to have double the amount of mana regeneration that us priests can do, without having to spend any talent points. I mean, its not like Priests are supposed to use spirit, are we? Thats a MAGE stat, right? Thats why you gave Magisters tons of spirit and Devout tons of INT, right?

Similarly, we are quite happy for our friends, the druids, and the long string of buffs and improvements they have recieved. Now that they can heal just as well as we can, It allows us to take much needed time off to do rest and relaxation activities, like playing golf with my buddy the Spirit Guide.

While you are working on shamans, I have a few suggestions. First of all, I have noticed that both Lightnign Shield and Ghost Wolf can be dispelled. This is clearly a bug. After all, their weapon buffs are undispellable, so it was probably just a mistake that made it possible for GW and LS to be dispelled. I also noticed that when I get earth shocked while casting a holy spell, it only silences the holy and discipline schools of magic. You should probably make it silence shadow as well, just for consistency. Finally, I noticed that shadowform cannot be purged. Since inner fire, fortitude, renew, PW:S, *and* the ever useful Elune's Grace can all be purged, it was clearly an oversight that left Shadowform immune to purging. Please fix this for the sake of the gimpy shamans. They really need it.

I know you've finished with your massive overhaul of the priest class, and I know you have a very busy schedule trying to dream up new spells for the shaman, (like bloodlust!) but I'd like to thank you for your continued activity in the Priest forum. We really enjoy having so much blue posting in there, and we're glad Fangtooth doesn't have to worry about a hostile backlash from angry priests. After all, we have nothing to be angry about.

Thanks for the love, guys! We love the new holy nova!"