Priest Changes 5.2 (25 February 2013)

Just read through the patch notes today morning, and not really happy with the outcome. Here are the changes and my opinion as to their viability.

Psyfiend belonging to an individual Priest will no longer cast Psychic Horror on the same target twice.

What this means is that if your Psyfiend fears a target once, it will not do so again. Its just a another nerf to Psyfiend which used to catch players within a second fear (which can be really annoying at times). This has now made this talent completely useless in my opinion.

Reasons:

1. 45 second cool down. This is an extremely long cool down for a CC ability, with a chance to work.

2. Hard to use effectively or reliably: You always have to hope that psyfiend fears the target you want to get feared, and 90% of the time it doesn’t. This can be compared to Shamans with capacitor, but at least they can root an enemy to set up the totem.

3. Diminishing returns with Psychic Scream: Even though the notes mention Psychic Horror, it is actually a Psychic Scream on the PTR and so diminishes in effectiveness with Psychic Scream. And now since it can only be cast once on a target, it pretty much makes this talent extremely useless.

4. Get 2 shotted. It takes 1 global to summon a Psyfiend, and probably takes 2 to kill it. People misconceive this aspect, and I do not blame them, since again, the situation is very unreliable. The position is as such: If the Psyfiend is capable to getting 1 shotted, you may consider it as a “Grounding Totem”. Just cast it and hope the enemy attacks, which might give you some breathing space …  maybe. Another strategy would be to shield the Friend, which is much more effective.

5. Poor range. The Psyfiend can only cast a fear within 20 yards range. Similar to a unglyphed scatter shot, but with a cast time and no movement (like a hunter who can move towards his target to scatter).

6. 2 seconds cast time. A 2 second cast time will give any class enough time to counter your Psyfiend, whether it be to run away or attack or silence, since all global cool downs are between 1 – 1.5 seconds.

The above reasons are more than enough to realise that Psyfiend is not worth using in any PVP situation. Rather have Dominate Mind, making you the Psyfiend and beating all 6 points mentioned above.

Penance cooldown reduced to 9 seconds. 

Probably a balance adjustment, and a much needed one since the change to divine aegis. It’s kind of sad that we won’t be able to chain Prayer of Mending immediately after Penance, but I guess we could switch between that and the instant Holy Fire now.

Power Infusion damage increase by 5%.

Was initially 10%, but I suppose it would be quite strong for Shadow Priests, which is why it may have been lowered down to 5%. For healing priests, the damage increase wouldn’t really make a difference anyway. As a Discipline priest, our damage is amazingly strong as it is, with penance and holy fire, coupled with Mind Bender and Reflective Shield. As a Holy Priest, we can do around 14k non crit smites and Holy Fire in the appropriate Chakra stance (Holy Fire is instant in Holy as well as Discipline).

The two screen shots below show the damage output of Discipline and Holy on a Test Dummy.

As 5.2 draws near, it is in my opinion, that healing priests will be in a bad position. Discipline priests were initially strong in the beginning stages of the PTR, but the sudden change to Divine Aegis and our Mastery changed all of that. Moreover, I’ve noticed many damage buffs to other DPS classes, so the only thing we can expect is for Priest (and perhaps other) healers to be squishy. Arenas on the PTR have been successful, but I have this sense that on Live, it is going to be a first few weeks of frustration.

How to CC chain as a Holy Priest in 5.2

I would consider discipline and holy priests to be the worst classes to help out in cc chains by themselves. All we have is our Psychic Scream, and a choice between a root, another fear and dominate mind. Normally in patch 5.1, I would run comps in 2s with a hunter, wait for his scatter trap, spectral guise in and fear the opponent, and try to get a good position for Dominate Mind. But there were many flaws to this approach: warriors, druids and even rogues would eat the traps if we were trying to cc their healer, or even a shaman would use grounding totem on the freezing trap. Dominate mind could easily be lined using the pillars or interrupted, due to its long 2.5 seconds casting time. We could counter by stunning or snaring the DPS and then scatter trapping, but this was still hard to accomplish.

So what is the scenario for 5.2?

Apparently, casting a CC chain as a disc priest may be much easier since the casting time for dominate mind is lower. Just cast fear into a Dominate Mind, but be sure to keep your partner healed up before casting dominate mind. Another fact is, that glyph of Pain Suppression and Inner Focus are all base line. So this would free up some glyph space to allow for other glyphs. I have my sights set on Glyph of Psychic Scream, which plants your feared opponents in place. This would assist us for some easy positioning. Simply fear, line the opponent DPS behind a pillar and cast fear. The uncertainty of where your feared target will run will be eliminated, allowing us to pre-plan our Dominate Mind with much more precision.

So that was Discipline Priest. What about Holy Priest?

Apparently it seems Holy priests can be even better at locking someone down than Disc. The rotation involves a spell called Holy Word: Chastise, which is a 3 second disorient. The 3 second disorient would allow for enough time to land in another Dominate Mind locking out your opponent for another 4 seconds (diminishing returns with the first Dominate mind).

So the chain for Holy Priests would go something like this:

Fear > Dominate Mind > Holy Word: Chastise > Dominate Mind

8 seconds + 8 seconds + 3 seconds + 4 seconds = 23 seconds

Off course you cannot possibly get a full 23 seconds chain, and the chances are that you will be interrupted by another opponent while casting or channelling Dominate mind. But this falls to our advantage as well. If interrupted, we are locked out of our shadow spells, leaving us one form of interrupt, less to worry about. Positioning will be very important as we would want to Dominate Mind just behind a pillar. A full rotation along with your partners cc will be frustrating for your opponents.

The best part about 5.2 is that Chakra stances for Holy priests have a 5 second cool down now, thanks to the pvp set bonuses. So it is possible to switch to Chastise and change back to Serenity within 5 seconds, allowing for this chain in CC. Just make sure you make full use of macros as changing stances does not trigger GCD.

Therefore, this may actually put us on par with other healers of locking an opponent out. However, when we use Dominate Mind, we are in a way, locked out as well. So that’s the only drawback of using this strategy.

So come next patch give this a shot. It is even possible to try it out in 5.1. However, you will probably not survive as a Holy priest since you will have mana issues, no survivability, 30 seconds Chakra CD and 2.5 seconds casting time for Dominate Mind.

Hope this article has given some helpful insight into improving your gameplay in the next patch.