Ghost - this isn't so much directed to you but the entire Blizzard Class Devs - why are Priests largely ignored? Is it just our imagination? You take the time to write other people (and I realize you are busy), but hardly any time to discuss or acknowledge that things are seriously wrong with our class.

For the past two months on an almost daily basis, I see and read post after post regarding Rogues, Hunters, Druids, Mages, Shamans, and Warlocks. But I hardly have seen any posts regarding the state of Priests whether it is Shadow or Disc.

I can recall my original WOTLK Priest discussion (mostly Shadow PvP) which probably received the most response we've had to date within the past 6 months - that was a week after the release.

The second response was because people noticed that Mindflay was bugged (acting like the arcane missile bug mages once had.) No one has talked about this since. It had to be mentioned.

The third message was to announce that COH was overpowered and how you guys were gonna put it on a CD. Quite understandable.

But for our 3 posts/announcements total, you've probably addressed all the other classes at least 10X over. So it goes back to my original question - why are we being left out of discussions???

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1. Working as intended.
2. We are looking into this.
3. Please do not bump the thread, we can ban you for that.
4. We do not have a 'Balance Team.'

We have 10 classes in the game, 30 different trees, and players who focus on both PvP and PvE issues. We have a long list of issues that we want to investigate and changes we want to make. I don't want to get into the business of having to justify which issues we look at first and why, and really I shouldn't have to.

My advice is just to stick to discussions about your class and not make these forums about HOW Blizzard designs classes.

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Q u o t e:
I still have this suspicion that the reason GC posts more on the damage forums is because that was his primary area.

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I have played a priest for years in both PvP and PvE. I have tried all 3 trees. I have healed just about every encounter in the game. You will shift your tactics now I assume from saying I don't play a priest to saying I must play a bad one. :)

What I play has almost nothing to do with which class issues we look at next. Sometimes it's because we want to make big changes and need to wait until we have a little elbow room to make those changes. Sometimes we are waiting on a bug to get fixed or for new tech. It's complicated, which is why I don't want to keep talking about how we decide what to work on next.

We hear what you are saying. If you keep posting on those or new issues, we will hear those responses too.

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Q u o t e:
That's cool. In which game was it that you played the priest?

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Well played. I lol'd.

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Q u o t e:
You don't actually go home and play on a Priest character that you've been playing for several years.

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No, I meant a real priest on a real server. But when I point this kind of thing out from time to time it is more to illustrate what a silly argument it is.

You don't know what classes we play. We typically don't tell you because...

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Q u o t e:
'Favoritism' is an easy scapegoat at any time.

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But even if it turned out we didn't play your class at all, it wouldn't change your argument. You wouldn't (I am almost certain) go from "Oh, I guess you do understand the issues then. Sorry." Instead the argument just becomes that we still don't understand the problem.

So really, it's just better than to stick with the class problems themselves and not attempt to bolster your arguments with these extra little bits that actually fail to bolster your argument.

"Inner Fire is a hassle to maintain" -- good feedback.
"Inner Fire is a hassle to maintain and Blizzard won't fix it because they don't play priests" -- bad feedback.

See the difference?

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Q u o t e:
Was it the prioritization decision of being able to cast levitate on another that led you to this conclusion?

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As Nightshroud pointed out, these are kind of apples and oranges. We don't start each day with a sorted list of priest issues and decide which is the most critical to handle first (and then somehow bizarrely decide that it's Levitate).

Levitate was a 2 minute change that took no discussion and very little testing. It doesn't have huge balance implications. Almost all of the suggestions that routinely get brought up in these forums are exactly the opposite: they are often big problems that require expensive (from a time budget point of view) solutions. That doesn't mean we don't hear you or that we aren't working on solutions. I am sorry I do not come by more than randomly to assure you of that. (I really am.)