Compiled Priest Issues

Please also check the PvP issues in post 8. in this thread.

[Talents]

● The discipline tree has no clear role, as it gives slight improvements in all areas but ultimately fails to be truly viable. The high end Disc. talents require the priest to give up key talents in either the healing or the damage tree while offering nothing comparable. On its own, the Discipline tree may very well be the weakest tree in the game. It desperately needs a purpose.

● Tier 1 of the Disc tree offers nothing interesting for a PvE priest. Neither Wand Spec. nor Unbreakable Will can be considered useful for PvE.

● Talents that quite simply are too weak.

1) Shadow Resilience, compare this to Balance of Power (druid talent) which is at the same tier and offers -4% chance to be hit with spells and +4% chance to hit with spells, or the mage's Prismatic Cloak which offers a -4% reduction in damage taken from all sources.
2) Focused Power is considered to be too weak. Suggestion: change the functionality of the talent to provide a 70% chance of ignoring spell pushback when casting offensive spells.
3) Enlightenment - 5% spirit bonus is useless for PvP which leaves 5% stamina and intelligence bonus as Disc is the worst PvE tree. Other classes get a 10% attribute bonus talent in Tier 1.
4) Mental Strength is underpowered compared to the mage equivalent in the same tier.
5) Blessed Recovery is not desirable and its poor implementation means it is unreliable since it will overwrite itself.

● Spirit Tap is almost useless for a raiding shadow priest. Suggestion: allow the Spirit Tap talent to have a 5% chance to proc from the priest's damage spells in addition to proccing after a killing blow.

● Divine Spirit and Meditation seem out of place in the Discipline tree. They would fit much better into the Holy Tree. Please consider swapping Divine Spirit with Holy Nova, and swapping Meditation and Blessed Recovery.

● Holy Nova does not have a clear purpose. It can be used to uncover stealthed players in PvP, but this is not the intended functionality of the spell. Suggestion: change Holy Nova to "blind" (disorient) enemies within 10 yards for 3 seconds to add a much needed CC spell for the holy priest. 30 sec. cooldown of course.

● Lightwell is of very limited use, and definitely not a class defining spell as many of the other 31 point talents in the game are. Many priests feel strongly that there should be a more useful and less limited talent in its place. Suggestion: please replace Lightwell with a better talent.

● Circle of Healing is of very limited use and not desirable as talent because, quite simply put, the priest does not need a targeted group heal. While Circle of Healing can be used successfully, it does nothing that couldn't be done better with existing spells in my experience. On top of that, it's difficult to use correctly due to its mechanics but even if used correctly there is no real advantage for having done so.
Suggestion: please replace Circle of Healing with a better talent.

● Holy Concentration seems overly restrictive since it only works on Flash Heal and Greater Heal. Please allow it to work on all healing sells, perhaps with the exception of Prayer of Healing.
It also only gives a 6% chance which seems weak for a talent this high in the tree compared to the equivalent talents in other trees.

● Empowered Healing only improves two of the priests healing spells, but one of the priest's main advantages is having many different healing spells to choose from. Please allow Empowered Healing to affect Renew, Prayer of Mending and Binding Heal.

[Itemization]

● Lack of pre-raid/heroic cloth healing items for the wrist and waist slot at level 70.

● T4 and T5 set issues

1) The T4 healing set bonuses are quite frankly, a joke. Especially the (2) set bonus.
2) The T4 and T5 dps sets have a good amount of spirit and spellcrit on them, but both are virtually useless for shadowpriests. Since these sets are raid sets, it would make sense that they were made for a shadowpriest, because a smite based priest is not viable in raids. The spell crit rating should be converted to spell hit rating and the spirit to mp5.
3) The T5 healing set has yellow sockets which should be changed to red or blue as yellow sockets are undesirable for a priest.
4) The T4 and T5 healing sets are very spirit heavy. If no changes are made to spirit and to the priest's mana regeneration from spirit please consider reducing the amount of spirit greatly and adding more mp5 instead.
5) The T4 and T5 healing sets have some spell crit rating. Spell crit rating is absolutely one of the least desirable stats for a priest. Please convert the spell crit rating on these items to +healing instead.

● the Metagem issue

Allow me to explain in detail:

The Bracing Earthstorm Diamond (+26 healing -2% threat) requires more yellow and more red gems than blue gems. As already metioned, yellow gems are not desirable for a priest (or druid or shaman for that matter). This basicaly means that the priest has to give up most of his blue gems to be able to use this Metagem. It's quite simply not worth doing so and the Bracing Earthstorm Diamond is effectively useless for priests, druids and shamans.

The Insightful Earthstorm Diamond (+12 in, chance on spellcast to gain mana) requires 5 gems of each color. Once again, the priest has to make sacrifices that are larger than what he would gain.

There are only two other metagems which would fit nicely together with the typical priest gem selection: the Power Earthstorm Diamond (requires 5 blue gems, +18 stamina and 5% stun resistance) and the Mystical Skyfire Diamond (requires more blue than yellow gems, 5% chance on next spell to cast in half the time) but neither of these seems to specifically made for a healer.

The metagems specifically made for dps classes have requirements which do not require any sacrifices. The same should be true for healer metagems.

There are also metagems available for dps classes through the PvP rewards system, but there aren't any for healers. Please add some.

Personally I would like to see all requirements on Metagems removed, which would solve a lot of issues. The idea behind sockets is to allow customization, why add metagems which then force the player to make very specific choices and do not leave any room for customization?

There are also other problems related to metagems. For example, it is impossible to meet the requirements for a Bracing Earthstorm Diamond with the full T4 priest healing set (unless that priest happens to be a tailor with a primal mooncloth belt or owner of an exodar life-staff), as there will always be more blue gems than red ones. Unless of course the priest sockets 4 prismatic gems (+3/4 all resistances, counts towards yellow, blue and red gems) and 1 orange gem, but that is a huge sacrifice and not worth doing.

● We're still missing some of the cloth healing PvP armor.

● The current gem selection is a bit limited for priests. As said several times already, yellow sockets are undesirable, not only for a healer but also for a shadowpriest because he doesn't require large amount of intellect and benefits very little from spellcrit.

Please add the following gems of superior (blue) quality:
1) An orange colored gem with +intellect and +spell damage.
2) An orange colored gem with +spell damage and +spell hit.
3) A green colored gem with +spell damage and +mp5.

Also add an additional stat to yellow gems that is useful for a priest healer and compares favorably to the existing healer stats +Healing and +Mp5. One such stat could be "Allows 2% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting" but this is touching the whole spirit issue.