Civilian

MY QUICK ANALYSIS OF PRIEST TREE CHANGES:

DISCIPLINE - Is now a crit-based tree that focuses more on damage mitigation.  As such, it will remain very popular for PvP.  Disc priests will have a number of abilities that augment the utility of their Power Word:Shield.  Disc priests may be granted raid spots for certain encounters to mitigate single-target damage, most likely on tanks.  Since damage mitigation is not reported by meters, this is not expected to be a popular spec for PvE.  I expect Disc priests to fill raid spots formerly held by IDS priests.  Also unaddressed are the problems shields may pose for rage generation on warriors and bears.  All priests will continue to have to spend at least 14 points on this tree for spirit-based mana regeneration -- leaving unanswered a long time complaint of holy priests.

HOLY - Reengineered to make holy priests more competitive with holy paladins as single target healers.  Mana efficiency with Greater Heal has been addressed by the Serendipity talent which may obviate the need to ever downrank a GHeal, thereby improving real HP/s.  Overall mana efficiency has been improved.  This tree remains spirit-based, but there is now some crit-based utility added in addition to Inspiration.  If the armor cap remains unchanged, it is uncertain what value Inspiration will have in WotLK.  Holy priests will find themselves torn between stacking crit and stacking spirit.  While the single-target healing robustness appears to have been buffed, the AoE healing utility appears to have been severely nerfed.  CoH is not on a cooldown in the current talent tree, but uses > 20% base mana, making 4 the maximum number of times it can be spammed.  The healing throughput of CoH does not appear to have been buffed.  Holy priests will likely compete with holy paladins for raid spots and lose raid spots to resto shamans who appear, for the present, to be the only robust AoE healing class.  If boss encounters in WotLK are heavy on raid damage, as those in T6 and SWP are, most raid healing spots will be offered to shamans.  The Lightwell talent actually looks useable now and is finally really better than using a bandage.

SHADOW - Oddly, this tree does not appear to have changed a whole lot.  Mana efficiency of shadow has been buffed with Improved Spirit Tap and talents that automatically refresh DoTs.  Shadow priests have, at last, been given a viable melee escape for PvP in the 51 pt talent that will also help keep shadow priests alive when aggro is pulled.  Improved Shadowform will likely be favored for PvP, but not for PvE.  Vampiric Touch has, at last, been changed so that mana return does not scale with shadow damage, thereby allowing shadow priest dps to scale more like other dps classes (although I do not know if crit scaling has been fixed).  A shadow priest that does shadow damage with VT up for 200 sec will return 100% of a party member's mana.  Stacking of shadow priests for more mana return may win them more raid spots if their dps can compare better with that of other classes.

 

Not sure how I truly feel about disc priest talents just yet.  I do like the idea of Penance in the disc tree because good disc priest play very offensively with supportive heals in pvp.  However, the mana cost is huge and for it being a none mobile cast, I can't see it being very useful.  If I need to stop and cast, it will most likely be a gheal, or a mana burn.  Just doesn't seem like stopping to channel a holy type mind flay is worth my time.  Disc priest job is support, not so much dps in pvp - or so I should say arena to be specific.  For bg, it'll be a really fun talent to pick up, but its just not useful for arena.  Disc priest dps comes as a bi product of shields, pains, and mana burn.  If my team is relying on my Penance dps to win the game, well my problem are my partners, not me.

I do like what they are doing with shadow.  I think a reason of this could be that since people will be getting the potion sickness debuff thus making chain potting a thing of the past, giving shadow priest longevity in their dps'ing might have be the answer.  This would mean every priest needs to be shadow for pve!  Funny how time changes things eh?  I remember specing shadow at 60 was the ultimate nub spec:)  Although shadow priest evocation could of been more creative, I still like it.  Between shadowfiends, 1 mana pot, evo, and mana reservation talents, shadow right now seems to be the only mana caster tree that will be able to last those 25 minute fights. (i have't looked at any other classes tree very thoroghly, just a a random statement)

Changes to my initial analysis:

HOLY

Happily, in the latest version of the WotLK priest talent tree, Circle of Healing has been restored to it's former self.  It is now an instant cast with a modest mana cost.  Although the number of players affected is back to 5, these can be any players in the raid rather than just those in the target's party.  This change makes CoH more competitive with the Shaman's chain heal,  It is likely that both priests and shamans will be used to fill raid healing spots on AoE intensive encounters.

My initial assessment that the Holy tree was crit-based to an increased degree was incorrect.  The holy tree remains heavilty spirit-based.  Holy priests still have little incentive to stack crit.

The three new 3-point talents are highly desireable for single-target healing priests.  Serendipity addresses the mana inefficiency of both GHeal and Flash Heal caused by overhealing.  Test of Faith augments single-target healing potency on targets less than 50% health.  Improved Holy Concentration appears to allow a holy priest to enter a clearcasting state on about 1 of every 6 casts (up from 1 of every 16).  This new talent strikes me as overpowered.  Not only does a HC proc give a free spell cast, but the IHC increases haste by 60% for up to 20 seconds.  There may be a cooldown after this talent procs, but I don't know.

As these new abilities address single-target healing, they will not benefit Circle of Healing priests.  A new 5-point talent, Divine Providence, increases the healing of CoH by 10%.  It seems plain that any one priest will not be able to spec to provide a best build for both an AoE focus and a single-target focus.  This leads me to believe that priests will have to decide up front what their primary role shall be, and spec accordingly.  As behavior is often guided by meter rankings, I still believe many priests will spec for CoH and then divide whatever points are remaining among the new single-target talents.

On a group PvP note, I find it interesting that both Empowered Healing and Divine Providence nominally increase the healing of Binding Heal.  Holy will never be a really viable arena spec, but this boost to Binding Heal will make heal tanking in BG's more effective.  Add to this the "Cheat Death"-like properties of Guardian Spirit, and Holy Rolling in BG's may become much more interesting.

SHADOW

In the latest version of the talent tree, Vampiric Touch has been changed back to its former self with a reduction in the mana return from 5% of shadow damage to 2% of shadow damage.  This change will cut both ways.  It will help end-game raiding priests scale up to better, more competitive levels of dps without having the mana return become overpowered.  But it will limit the group utility of shadow priests who are not at end-game. 

Improved shadow form effectively causes the priest's fade ability to function like a second PvP trinket.  Even better, while faded, a shadowpriest has a 70% chance to resist spell pushback, something that they've been wanting in the forums for a long time.  This talent seems very PvP focused, and will likely not be useful in PvE where there are currently only a few encounters that mandate a trinket.

The new talent Twisted Faith will give PvE shadow priests impetus to stack spirit. As PvP gear is devoid of spirit buffs, this talent will not be that helpful in PvP (except for end-game priests that decide to roll in some PvE gear ... gg).

 

emo:

Not sure how I truly feel about disc priest talents just yet.  I do like the idea of Penance in the disc tree because good disc priest play very offensively with supportive heals in pvp.  However, the mana cost is huge and for it being a none mobile cast, I can't see it being very useful.  If I need to stop and cast, it will most likely be a gheal, or a mana burn.  

 

I agree.  Most of the changes to the Disc tree strike me ones that try to give Disc priests a raison d'etre for raids.  Although people talk about disc priests in current raids on the forums. the reality is that no guide calls for them and most RL's would prefer not to give them raid spots due to their low HP/s.  In 2.4, Disc is an arena-only spec, as far as I can tell.  There are lots of them in BG's too ... but ... the D+H of holy in BG's is usually higher, and often much higher.  That doesn't make them useless, of course.  Prot pallys and prot warriors have definite roles esp. in WSG. 

The damage mitigation and mana efficiency talents in the WotLK tree appear to make it clear that Disc is not "Holy Lite", and that the focus of Disc is damage mitigation as opposed to Holy's health restoration.  I haven't done a spreadsheet analysis, but the question that comes to mind is "can a disc priest attenuate as much damage with all these talents proc'd and stacked as good plate armor?"  It seems like with Grace, Divine Aegis, Focused Will, etc. a disc priest could tank some bosses, lol.

Divine Aegis is a good example.  Crits abrogate 10% of damage for 12 sec.  It's very much like Inspiration in the holy tree.  I agree that Penance by itself sounds pretty useless, but in combination with Grace it could be really powerful.

 

 

Single-target focused Holy PvE spec (14 / 57 / 0):

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents2.html?tal=05320001300000000000000000023505003030015053105330351000000000000000000000000000

If one assumes these core talents, there isn't a lot of wiggle room:

• SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE (5/5)
• SPIRIT OF REDEMPTION (1/1)
• SPIRITUAL HEALING (5/5)
• HOLY CONCENTRATION (3/3)
• EMPOWERED HEALING (5/5)
• SERENDIPITY (3/3)
• IMPROVED HOLY CONCENTRATION (3/3)
• TEST OF FAITH (3/3)
• DIVINE PROVIDENCE (5/5)

This spec maximizes the single-target healing and mana-efficiency talents.  Note that it does not even elect for Circle of Healing.  This spec could opt for Circle of Healing (for occasional use) instead of, say, 1 point in Improved Renew. However CoH is itself a three talent spec in two trees and this example is not able to max out Holy Reach (which some say is not essential for CoH) and Mental Agility (which is the only mana efficiency talent for CoH).  Six points must be withdrawn from the Holy Tree in order to max out Mental Agility.

Since single-target focused healing often means tank healing, this spec maxes out Holy Specialization and elects Inspiration 3/3.

Divine Providence could be considered optional for a single-target focused spec.  However, I do a lot of healing with Prayer of Mending (it is often my #2 or #3 heal) and the buff to Prayer of Healing would provide an amazing boost to HP/s in those circumstances in which PoH is fully applied (Warlord Naj'entus, for example).

The more I look at Disc, the more raid viable it looks to me.  There are a couple of global issues and concerns:

1. POWER WORD SHIELD: Absorbed damage will not generate rage for bear and warrior tanks.  Since damage in end-game raids is so much, this is almost never an issue, but the potency of PW:S is buffed in the current talent tree and some have suggested that a discipline priest will be spamming PW:S on every cooldown.
2. PAIN SUPPRESSION: Instantly knocks off 5% of the targets threat, but mitigates 40% damage.  Because the threat knockdown is percentage based, the longer a fight goes on, the more threat PS will knock off.  This could be disastrous.  A well-coordinated raid could possibly use hunters/rogues to misdirect on a PS use, but this makes PS unlikely to be useful as an "oh sh-t" spell.  Furthermore, the longer a fight goes on, the less likely that misdirection can compensate.  PS will probably initially be used to open fights.  How it can be used as fights progress is not really clear.
3. DAMAGE MITIGATION:  I suppose it is possible that on certain encounters a Discipline priest will mitigate so much damage that a bear or warrior tank can't get enough rage to sustain TPS.  This is not expected to be an issue on end-game raids.

PvE Discipline Spec:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents2.html?tal=05313001305051205010423125120505003030000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

variableIsSite = 1;

Assumptions:

• REFLECTIVE SHIELD 0/5: A healer will always have low dps.  Reflective shield is seen as a PvP talent.
• IMPROVED HEALING 3/3: I assume every PvE Disc priest will put 18 points in the Holy tree to pick up this mana efficiency talent for GHeal. Improved Healing 3/3 is taken with Rapture 4/5, since I assume the mana benefit will be better with Improved Healing but proving this will take some modeling.
• INSPIRATION 3/3 and HOLY SPECIALIZATION 5/5:  Every Disc priest will need Holy Specialization since the Discipline tree is crit-based.  Inspiration proc'ing together with Divine Aegis seems overpowered to me, but the two provide fantastic levels of damage mitigation ... and with a disc priest keeping up a stack of Grace, how could any tank take enough damage?
• IMPROVED HEALING 3/3 + RAPTURE 4/5  >  IMPROVED HEALING 2/3 + RAPTURE 5/5.  This remains to be seen.  GHeal should still be the mainstay of a Discipline priest's spell rotation so I am assuming that Improved Healing will provide better mana efficiency.  There does not seem to be enough points to fully elect both talents.  I am assuming that Penance is worth electing and it seems like it is.
• DIVINE AEGIS 3/3.  This is a no-brainer.  When it proc's together with Inspiration it would be amazing.  So far, nothing indicates that these talents have any kind of internal cooldown.
• GRACE 2/2: This is a no-brainer.  A Disc priest will use GHeal and Penance to keep a full stack of Grace on the tank.
• PAIN SUPPRESSION 0/1 or 1/1?: This is clearly a PvP talent.  As per the discussion above, it is unclear when this can be used in PvE.
• ASPIRATION 2/2: A Disc priest will probably be activating Power Infusion on himself at every cooldown for mana efficiency.  This talent takes 24 sec off the cooldown.  It also reduces the cooldown on Penance to 8 sec which I am guessing is worth doing.
• BORROWED TIME 5/5: This talent is essential if PW:S is going to be a mainstay in the Disc priest's spell rotation, which I think it will be.  Fully buffed, a Disc priest's bubble will absorb over 5k damage.

I can't wait to give Discipline a try when it's activated.  It certainly is a different approach to healing.

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Watch the video for the Shadow Priest Dispersion skill. Kinda neat that you can now aggro a big group, dot em up and kill em all then have full mana to do it all over again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqQqOLcVk7c

The new beta release introduced a wide array of nerfs into the priest class.

Dispersion has been nerfed so that it only reduces damage by 60% and does not restore health anymore.  Other changes and nerfs to the shadow tree make it look less interesting.

The holy tree has also been nerfed.  Serendipity restores much less mana than before when overhealing occurs, and Improved Holy Concentration has been strongly nerfed (but it was really way overpowered).

Virtually all the new talents in the discipline tree have been nerfed.

This is still in beta so we'll see.  At least in this patch there's nothing here that makes me feel really excited about leveling a priest to 80 ... but ... balancing is still in progress, I guess.

I note that in none of the patches has anything been done to provide priests with any kind of stackable raid utility.

 

The WoW priest forum yesterday was a tumult of rage and chaos after the new beta was released.  By comparison the other class forums were languid.

There was enough outcry, apparently, that Blizz felt compelled to respond with a raft of Blue posts promising to undo some of the changes that were implemented.

 

 

sanctimonius:

The WoW priest forum yesterday was a tumult of rage and chaos after the new beta was released.  By comparison the other class forums were languid.

There was enough outcry, apparently, that Blizz felt compelled to respond with a raft of Blue posts promising to undo some of the changes that were implemented.

Holy

- We're going to make Holy Concentration scale with spell crit instead of just a flat %
- Divine Hymn now does a short duration heal over time effect in addition to it's crowd-control capability, and is now baked into a lot of Holy talents (Holy Reach, Divine Providence etc.)
- We improved Blessed Recovery so that it now works like Ignite (Mage), where each crit gets added into the periodic heal over time and refreshes the duration.
- Lightwell - You can now see how many charges are left in the Lightwell by clicking on it.

Discipline

- Grace will now provide 2% healing for the Priest, stacks up 3 times. So 6% increased healing taken from that target who has Grace (but only by you, the Priest).
- Twin Disciplines will now work with Mind Flay.

Shadow

- Shadow Resilience re-designed. Now called Mind Melt - Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Mind Blast spells by 2/4%.
- Shadow Power: Now 20/40/60/80/100% critical strike damage bonus, also works with Mind Flay.
- Improved Shadowform - The chance to remove all movement impairing effects when you Fade is now restored.
- Psychic Horror - Redesigned. Now reduces all damage done by targets when Psychic Scream ends by 15/30%. Lasts 6 sec.
- Dispersion - 90% damage reduction is restored.
- Misery - Now has 5/10/15% bonus spell power to Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Mind Blast.
 

The Blue Post goes on to say ....

Discipline - About damage mitigation, utility and single target HPS. It's intended to be a better tank healer.

Holy - Good single target healer, but more healing utility. Intended to be the AOE healer, or the healer than can react to any situation. Only spec of a class that has an on demand HoT, AOE, Lightwell which players can click to heal themselves, a flash heal, a large greater heal.

Shadow - Obviously a single target sustained DPS, with Mind Sear now should be one of the strongest AOE classes.

 nerf bat on priest ; ; from mmochampion

 

Priest (Skills List / Talent Calc. (8926))
Skills
Holy

• Divine Hymn now affect the closest 10 enemies, it also heals the closest friendly targets for 4506 over 6 seconds.

Shadow

• Fade is now a single-rank ability

Talents
Discipline

• Borrowed Time now reduces the base global cooldown of your Power Word: Shield spell by 3/6/9/12/15% (Old - Reduces global cooldown by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 sec)
• Renewed Hope now Increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Penance spells by 2/4% (Down from 3/6%) on targets afflicted by the Weakened Soul effect.
• Rapture now causes you to gain up to 0.5/1/1.5/2/2.5% of your maximum mana each time you heal with Greater Heal, Flash Heal or Penance, or damage is absorbed by your Power Word: Shield or Divine Aegis.  Increasing the amount healed or absorbed increases the mana gained.
• Enlightenment doesn't increase your intellect anymore.
• Improved Inner Fire now Increases the effect of your Inner Fire spell by 15/30/45%, and increases the total number of charges by 4/8/12.
• Martyrdom now decreases the duration of Interrupt effects by 10/20% instead of giving a chance to resist them.
• Twin Disciplines now only affects instant spells.

Holy

• Improved Holy Concentration now increases the chance you'll enter Holy Concentration by 1/2/3% (down from 4/7/10%) and also increases your spell haste by 10/20/30% (down from 20/40/60%) on your next (down from "three next") Greater Heal, Flash Heal or Binding Heal spells after you gain Holy Concentration. Lasts 20 sec.
• Test of Faith now increases healing by 2/4/6% (down from 5/10/15%) and spell critical effect chance by 2/4/6 (down from 4/7/10%) on friendly targets at or below 50% health.
• Empowered healing changed to - Your Greater Heal spell gains an additional 8/16/24/32% (up from 2/4/6/8%) and your Flash Heal and Binding Heal gain an additional 4/8/12/16% (up from 1/2/3/4%) of your bonus healing effects.
• Serendipity now refunds 8/17/25% (Down from 20/40/60%) of mana cost on overheal. It doesn't require you to overheal the target for more than 50% anymore.

Shadow

• Dispersion now reduces all damage taken by 60% (down from 90%) and doesn't regenerate health anymore.
• Twisted Faith now increases your spell power on all spells (Old - only shadow spells) by 2/4/6/8/10% (down from 6/12/18/24/30%)
• Improved Shadowform doesn't give a chance to remove all movement impairing effects when Fade is used anymore.
• Misery doesn't increase the damage of your Mind Blast / Mind Flay / Mind Sear spells anymore.
• Shadow Resilience now Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by all spells by 2/4%. (Old - Reduces physical damage taken by 2/4%.)
• Improved Fade renamed to Veiled SHadows. Now Decreases the cooldown of your Fade ability by 6 sec, and reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend ability by 2 minutes.
• Improved Spirit Tap now let your mana regenerate at a 10/20% (down from 25/50%) rate while casting.

 

Rokochan:

 nerf bat on priest ; ; from mmochampion

First off, I like my priest.  My attitude reflects my concern about the continued raid and PvP viability for priests (and holy priests in particular) ... not my disdain for them.

The Holy tree in particular is seen as a problem in WotLK.  The added talents give us no new mechanic, and simply appear to address some problems that 3.0 will create.  For example, in 3.0 there will be a penalty for downranking -- which was a fundamental holy priest tactic, particularly in T6+ content when stopcasting could be perilous.  To address this, talents have been added to reduce the penalty for overhealing while fullcasting.  So, I would say that many of the 3.0 talents are compensatory, rather than evolutionary.

But my conclusion is that there is no new mechanic for holy priests in WotLK.

While Blizz has argued that some abilities seem "class defining" and that they just don't feel right passing them around to other classes (eg. no more instant ghost wolf form for shamans), healing appears to be a different matter.  With each new expansion, the defining value of a priest has become more and more diluted.  In TBC, the priest was demoted from being the best single-target healer ... and it took until 2.2 to get an AoE heal that made priests competitive with shamans for AoE healing.

In 3.0, every healing class will have an AoE heal.  As the numbers stand currently, the priest's is inferior to all of them.  Although, in the current beta, the druid appears to be the only healing class needed by any raid, it is almost certain that this will be balanced at some point (probably before the initial release of WotLK).   As I compare the range of abilities as well as overall utility, I cannot help to ask why anyone in either a 5-man party or a 10 or 25-man raid would -need- a priest.  We have no type of healing spell for which we can claim mastery: we still have no kind of stackable raid utility, and we are the most fragile and vulnerable healing class. Druids, for example, can now do the best HoTs, good burst, better AoE, and now even good retroactive healing while providing superior raid utility with innervate, battle rez, and the ToL buff. 

Some excerpts from the WoW forum emphasize these points:

------------------------------------

In my opinion Holy Priests will be outclassed, outhealed by other classes. I will be sure to keep this post reasonable, but here is why:

- Holy Priests in LK have no raid buffs they bring to a raid
- Our hots are very weak
- our group heals are just plain outhealed by Druids group heals with their version of COH
- We have no innervate, our shafowfiend is not reliable for mana return

here is just one example of why a Druid will just outclass us with their new abilities and talents:

- They have direct heals now that are close to a greater heal in size and the same cast time
- They have a version of COH that is MUCH more powerful
- They have innervate!
- They have battle rez and can now rez out of combat too!
- They are the king of Hots undisputed
- They can buff a raid with Gift of the wild

Basically Druids are the new Jack of all Trades, and Masters of Everything when it comes to healing. Where is the holy priest love?

------------------------------------

In the beta, everything is trivially outhealled by a druid. They haven't done a numbers check. Nourish is a one time cast that outheals a priest spamming CoH. Recently one druid did 75% of the healing in a Naxx run. Of course if they left it this way, people would only ever want druid healers. Duh. But they won't leave it this way so don't even pretend it's an issue.

No, the REAL problem is the failure either a) fix crap priest talents or b) give the holy priest any kind of interesting new mechanic.

Paladin's Beacon is simply amazing. Nourish is the greatest AoE heal in the game. Shaman Spirit Link effectively doubles your main tank's hit points. These abilities will all permanently change the way the class is viewed and played. Priests will continue to flash and gheal with most of the new talents principally there to overcome the fact that we can't downrank.

The ground breaking new mechanic for priests in WotLK is stop casting. Welcome to priest healing in 2004. *sigh*

-------------------------------------------------

Of course, the game is still in beta and the coefficients and the numbers are in flux.

But what you can say at this point with certainty is that every healing class has been buffed with new healing mechanics -- except priests.  The position that classes may have defining abilities apparently does not apply to healers, with the possible exception of druids.  And that in the current beta, priests have a deficit in the healing:utility ratio.  While players of most other classes are looking forward to 3.0, I find that -- at least as a holy priest -- I don't have anything really new to look forward to.

It may be Blizzard's expectation that the buffing of Discipline to a level of raid viability should be balanced by a decrease in the raid viability of Holy.

 

 

IMO, the class defining element of priest is the fact that we are the jack of all trades when it comes to healing.  We are the only healing class that can HoT, quick heal, slow big heal, aoe heal, instant aoe heal, migate damage, and also we have supportive heal utilities, ex: PoM - which is a OP skill already IMO..  So should priest really excel in any one area?  I would have to say no.  I won't argue that the holy tree has always had its issues, but its the very fact that we can do so many things as a single healer that prevent the holy tree from being buffed out the wazzo like droods have been.  If you need a MT healer, we can do that.  Raid heals? No problem.  Aoe heals? got that too... need extra HoTs... thats us.  With a priest wide range of healing abilities and versitility, its not surprising we're not getting buffed out the ass like droods. 

I don't think you should compare priest to other healing classes either.  Making the argument that priest aren't changing much from 70-80 means blizzard feels content with what we can do.  Look at shamens and paladin... shamans - besides for a earth and water shield, shamans recieved nothing between 60-70 to change their class mechanics.  Paladins... ummm, have you ever made one????  Healing paladins have 2 buttons to press for healing since level 6!  Its about damn time they get something thats not a flash of light to press.  Priest on the other hand changed a great deal since being 60 and I've extremely happy with the way priest are this time.  I can't say much for lvl 80 yet, but priest are still my favorite class out of all the characters I've made.  The grass is always greener when you compare apples to oranges, but I'm sure druids would happliy trade in a hot or two for shield, or PoM like ability.

emo:

IMO, the class defining element of priest is the fact that we are the jack of all trades when it comes to healing.  We are the only healing class that can HoT, quick heal, slow big heal, aoe heal, instant aoe heal, migate damage, and also we have supportive heal utilities,

 

I guess a point I wanted to make about the expac is that class homogenization FOR HEALING classes has occurred.  If you accept that in TBC: priests had a little of everything, shammies had AoE, druids had HoTs, pallys had single-target ... then this argument is true.  Avid priest devotees would point this out often in defense of the class in TBC for all the reasons you point out.

However in WotLK homogenization has occurred so that all classes are getting more of all these abilities.  If healing was the class defining attribute in original WC, and "master of all trades" was the class defining attribute in TBC ...  then there no longer is a solid class defining attribute for the priest class in WotLK.  Druids in particular will be more a "jack of all trades" class than priests are set to be, having been given increased raid utility as well as retroactive, improved burst, and AoE healing skills (our HoT was never even close to being comparable to those of a druid in TBC).

In PvP, resto druids have bear form armor, roots/snares, stuns, interrupts, crowd control, are mostly immune to roots/snares, and are immune to some forms of cc.  In PvE, resto druids bring GotW, battle rez, regular rez, and innervate ... some of which are stackable (eg. the more druids you have, the more brez you have).  This definitely exceeds the spectrum of utility provided by a holy priest in either role.  As the array of healing types that all classes can do now is becoming more homogenous, I have to ask what it is that makes a holy priest special, relevant or important in WotLK; and why a raid leader would want a holy priest if the "jack of all trades" status is suitably provided by other healers at the benefit of increased utility (blessings or totems/bloodlust or brez/innervates).

What I'm -really- mad about is that I chose the priest class because it was advertised as the most versatile healing class.  I invested over a year in scaling him up.  Now as I look at the talent trees for WotLK, I'm having a hard time imaging how that investment will hold value in the expansion.

Comments like these from very experienced, long term hardcore WoW players that have been devoted to the priest class offer me no succor:

 

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 can't decide on whether I should play my druid or paladin alt in WotLK.

I'm a day1 beta tester. However, our class is terrible. As bad as it is in 3.0, it gets worse as you level to 80 due to the new spells trained by druids and paladins. I have tried for months to improve the priest class on the beta forums, but to no avail.

Anyways, with the release date's announcement, I have given up hope of priests ever becoming successful again before the next expansion, another two years from now.

Who will be rolling a druid or paladin for WotLK? I personally can't decide - both classes are amazing! Pallies are what discipline priests wish they could be at lvl80, and resto druids are what holy priests wish they could be at lvl80. So many options - what should I do?!

Oh, and sorry priest community. I, Eloderung, priest and raider of nearly four years, have failed you all on the beta side of things. Better luck next expansion :(

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Eloderung, S2 Gladiator
http://www.saga-guild.org 6/6 Sunwell
Beta: Sayana@Northrend.