In a detailed forum post, WoW developer Wraith comments on the state of the priest in WoW: Dragonflight. In the post, some points of the Priest changes are addressed that are on players’ minds. The post also addresses why the Priest is the only healer that doesn’t get an interrupt ability.

Meanwhile, Druids and Paladins can also skill a “Kick” via their class talent tree. Priest previously had the option to choose Silence, and at the very beginning of the Alpha even had a Mass Silence via Divine Star. However, WoW devs do not consider a Kick skill necessary for Holy and Discipline Priests. “We are aware that Holy and Discipline are the two specs that do not have access to an interrupt, either as a base skill or in a talent tree. We are also aware that the Shadow Priest needs to skill Silence in his tree, which increases the number of non-damage skills in his tree.”

“For this reason, we will not be including silence in the priest class tree. Access to an interrupt is not necessary for all specializations, in our opinion. In PvP, Holy and Discipline already provide valuable control for the team, and in addition, Silence would provide more control than we would like. This is especially true considering how much control all classes receive in Dragonflight,” said WoW Dev Wraith on the official WoW forum.

Priest Feedback (WoW:Dragonflight Beta).

Number of Active Spells
We agree. Priests have too many active spells. While we think there will be more to assess as the expansion plays out, the first spell that comes to mind is Shadow Mend feeling unnecessary with Flash Heal being available to all Priests. Instead of Shadow Mend as a talent that overrides Flash Heal, we are working towards removing the spell. We realize that losing a secondary healing school lockout may not sit well with Discipline Priests in PvP, but we’re happy with this direction overall. While no plans are in place right now, we’re also discussing Mindgames and Power Word: Life as contributing to the number of active spells for Priests.

Class Tree
Overall, we feel the class tree is in a good spot. As mentioned above, there are too many active spells and we’re looking to pull back on that. For Shadow, the class tree has shaped out well. We’re less happy about how many nodes can feel mandatory for Holy and Discipline and this is something we’ll be looking to improve over time.

Discipline
We will continue to monitor feedback surrounding the changes we’ve made to Renew and Power Word: Shield for Dragonflight. Currently, we do not have plans to change this and think it is playing well.

Historically Discipline has revolved heavily around Penance. We want to allow for builds that are centered around Penance, but also open opportunities for other spells in the Discipline toolkit to shine if invested into, such as Smite and Power Word: Shield. We look forward to your feedback on if this is felt with the tree, tuning aside.

For Shadow Covenant, we’re looking to take away the downsides so that it encourages Shadow spells but doesn’t discourage Holy spells. Shadow Covenant has gone through a lot of change, but we’re hoping this is a step in the right direction.

Holy
Lightweaver is our alternative design to Flash Concentration. Weaving between Flash Heal and Heal is fun, but wound up feeling like a maintenance buff. We believe having a back-and-forth between the spells with stacks to improve situational usability is a better direction for single-target focused builds.