Countdown to Forever: 4 - Are Priests Blessed by The Light?

With Forever launching on November 4, we’re looking at how each class performed during beta, how players received their changes from Classic, and how they are shaping up for the Forever launch and level 60.

Check out all our series:

8: Druid
7: Mage
6: Shaman
5: Warlock
4: Priest (You’re here!)

The info below was written based on our experiences during beta and feedback from our Priest writers, Rainy and Anshlun.

Discipline Priest

Discipline feels super fun to play once you unlock Penance, which was available during beta. The gameplay loop for the spec is adaptable, allowing you to deal competitive damage while leveling or healing, depending on the situation. Similar to other Priest specs, Disc is very mana-hungry while leveling, requiring you to wand enemies often to enter the 5-second rule.

One issue Disc has in Forever is a lack of group tools, whereas Holy has plenty of options available.

Classic veterans will notice a major rework of the Discipline tree for priests. Before, it occupied a place of support or augmentation for Holy and Shadow. Forever transforms the tree, and it obtains its own identity. Some examples of that are Soul Warding, Divine Aegis, and Renewed Hope.

For endgame, Disc aims to be a single-target healing powerhouse with incredible utility through Power Infusion. There is also the possibility of a holy-themed DPS spec with many damage-focused holy talents between the Discipline and Holy trees, but for now, that’s just wishful thinking.

Discipline Priest Guide by Rainy

Holy Priest

During beta Holy felt… okay. If you like to make green bars go up with simple spells and straightforward spells, Holy is the spec for you. We didn’t have access to every tool from the spec during beta, like Prayer of Mending, but it shouldn’t change its playstyle too much.

For issues, Holy doesn’t really have many, unless you consider its simplicity an issue. One issue would be that leveling as Holy feels terrible due to the lack of damage when compared to Disc and Shadow.

From Classic, the biggest change has been the addition of talents like Prayer of Mending and Litany of Light, which are fun talents that spice up your rotation.

When reaching max level, Holy is looking to fit a more group-healing role than its Classic tank-healing role, which is now taken by Disc.

Holy Priest Guide by Rainy

Shadow Priest

If you were familiar with Shadow in Classic, you’ll wonder what has changed on early levels, as a lot of what you find was already there. The recipe is the same, but Shadow still has its level strengths, offering a very constant flow with its mana regen abilities from Spirit Tap and Meditation.

For issues, the one Shadow has right now is probably its rotation sameness. It isn’t a matter of simplicity, but a matter of having no variance, being able to put the whole rotation in a cast sequence. It would be healthy to the spec to have some sort of variance by introducing a spell like Shadowy Insight that has flavor to the rotation.

Another is the balance of Vampiric Embrace. While not final and subject to change, it is possible for Shadow to pay some sort of hybrid tax due to the strength of the healing of Vampiric Embrace. While in normal fights it will result in mostly overhealing, if there are fights with constant rot damage, you could see groups dropping healers in favor of Shadow Priests due to their passive, always-active healing.

Most of the significant changes to Shadow either happen towards the end of the talent tree, like Shadowform being its capstone node, or are spells learned only at higher levels, only briefly available on beta. Due to that, most Priests will likely pick talents in the Disc tree to get Meditation for extra regen until level 40, when they will respec to grab Shadowform. The changes to Shadowform are incredible, with the mana cost reduction for all Shadow spells and increased crit damage.

At endgame, Shadow is a very straightforward spec: keep both your dots up, Mind Blast on cooldown, Shadow Word: Death on cooldown, fill with Mind Flay. That’s it. In situations when AoE is required, sadly Shadow has no options for that, with only Shadow Word: Pain and eventual Devouring Contagion procs being available.