It’s time to close out the class Q&A feature with the Priest class having the spotlight. This feature is meant to answer questions about the thought the development team has for the class going forward. As usual Ghostcrawler answers the questions for the community. You can find the Priest Q&A here.
Priests are not a jack of all trades, master of none healer. Priests are strong and versatile healers and the only trade off is knowing how to manage the many spells that priests have since a lot of them have these small niches.
Shadow priests used to just a leveling …read more

When we look back at patch 3.1 in the future, we’ll probably say that’s one of the biggest patches in WoW history if not the biggest. By that I mean not only will it feature Ulduar and dual specs but it’s probably the patch with the biggest revamp to all the classes that’s not a pre-expansion patch or an expansion itself. We’re not just looking at tweaks here and there since we see some major changes just like the removal of consumable ammunition for ranged weapons and the changes to soul shard management system to name a few.
The latest patch …read more

Healers like myself have been cherishing the remaining time we have until the mana regen nerf is implemented since we are the ones most affected and targeted by the changes. The aim of the nerfs is to make mana conservation and management a big thing and not just rely on our regen to tide us over while we heal endlessly.
Ghostcrawler came up with more details about this nerf in a post in the official forums. Based on what he wrote, there’s some cause for celebration since the nerfs don’t seem to be as bad as we all thought. I won’t …read more

MMO Champion tells of a patch 3.09 that could be coming out this week. Since I haven’t tried checking the PTR or even if it’s up at all and the PTR forum is currently out for me, I can’t really check if this is really true. There isn’t even a patch 3.09 PTR notes so that makes the situation a bit worse. In any case, there’s something out there and it’s going to change a few things, even glyphs. Some of the change entries I’ve seen before as legit changes for the future so that might lend some credence to …read more

Yesterday, I wrote about the announcement for class changes that are coming for patch 3.1. Ghostcrawler mentioned that they were working on a few things and that they would announce said changes soon. Now when Blizzard uses the word “soon” it actually usually takes a while so I’m very surprised that some of the changes are announced already. this must be the fastest “soon” ever.
According to CM Eyonix, they’ll be announcing the class changes in a three part series. This first one happens to be for priests, rogues and shamans. The changes are listed below and are subject to change …read more

It’s been almost a month and a half already since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out so it’s probably safe to make a commentary about my observations about popularity of certain class specs. You can tell that the game has changed quite a bit when certain class specs that were quite popular before suddenly aren’t as popular now and it seems like that’s exactly the case for Wrath of the Lich King.
Perhaps the most glaring example that I have seen (at least in my experience) is the Protection Paladin. In TBC, they were very popular for their …read more

Holy priests and Restoration druids just received some potentially sad news earlier about their spells Circle of Healing and Wild growth, respectively. Both spells have been known to be quite similar because of their AoE healing capability. Ghostcrawler posted in the forums that they are thinking of adding a 6 second cooldown for both spells
If implemented, this change would affect Circle of Healing more than Wild Growth since the it makes sense to spam the former because it heals it’s full amount right away while the latter does it over time. This would make healing AoE encounters harder to do …read more

Just when Blizzard added the Death Knight hero class to address the tank shortage, it seems like a healer shortage is another problem that might have to be addressed. I say might because these are all observations from some people as the Wrath of the Lich King expansion approaches.
Dizeh of the Northrend-US server tells of having a healer shortage within their guild since they want to be something else. Cipher from the same server says that he has a hard time finding healers for instances. It seems that the culprit is a combination of different things.
One reason I …read more

Shadow priests have had it tough over the years ever since the game came out. They were a nice spec for PvP but as far as PvE is concerned, they never really came into their own. Their PvE viability became much better with the release of TBC but really only for their utility as mana batteries. If you wanted a class that would really dps, getting a warlock or something would have been the better option. But it seems like this will change will the release of the Wrath of the Lich king expansion. Blizzard poster Ghostcrawler tells us more:
assuming …read more

I always found it a bit strange that priests were the only class that had their own special racials. On one hand, it lent a little something to the lore since the different priest races worshiped a different deity, giving them unique powers. Of course this also made the decisions a bit less interesting when creating your priest character. Back in the day, the then priest racial ability Fear Ward made dwarf priests more sought after than other races. Undead priests were also popular for their Devouring Plague racial ability. But with the decision to make Fear Ward a baseline …read more