Hi,
I already wrote a comment about this in the 1.17.2 class changes thread, but I think it deserves its own thread to not fly under the radar.
Allow me to start by saying that I love this change. I plan to reroll Night Elf Priest the moment patch drops either way, to try it out in addition to the great changes to Smite Priest. Such a unique way to approach racial Priest abilities, and fits the lore perfectly.
Here are a few issues with Bows on Priests however, that, I think, will mean Priests will always prefer Wands :
- Bows not benefitting from Wand Spec's bonus damage, hit, and mana return, on top of their much lower DPS, means that a Priest using a bow will deal immensely less damage and have worse mana efficiency than one using a Wand. The difference in damage is staggering: the strongest bow, Soulstring, has 50.86 DPS, increased to 68.36 with Thorium Headed Arrow ; Wand of Fates, which has the same iLvl, has 113.67, an increase of about 66%. Searing Shot granting an extra shot every 10 seconds, even with bonus damage and a spelldamage coef, will not be enough to bring the DPS of Bows to be comparable to Wands, and even if it did, the mana cost, lack of mana regen, and triggering of the 5-second-rule will still make it an inferior choice for most cases
- Since Bows generally have physical damage stats, such as Agility, using a Bow deprives Priests of a caster stat stick. I don't think adding caster bows is the answer either, even though spellhunter is a thing: one memespec and one race/class combo is too niche to wrrant overcrowding loot tables.
- Spellpower being mostly non-existent on leveling gear compounds these issues, meaning that any leveling Night Elf priest will ditch their bow for the first Wand they find, and likely not return to using a bow til they're decked out with spellpower gear.
Solution suggestions (pick one or multiple):
- Change Wand Spec to Ranged Weapon Spec, and simply carry over all the effects of Wand Spec to work with Bows. Additionally, the reason why Wands have such higher damage than other Ranged weapons is because they don't benefit from Agility: this could be remedied by adding a large increase to Autoshot damage through Ranged Weapon Spec, even if it means reducing Searing Shot's numbers. Example text : Increases the damage of Wands by 12/25% and that of Bows by 25/50%*. Increases chance to hit with Ranged Weapons by 2/4%. All ranged attacks have a chance to refund mana equal to your level on hit.
*This drastic increase would still make Bow autoshots much less damaging than Wand autoshots: Soulstring would get bumped to abou 103 DPS with Thorium Headed Arrows, while Wand of Fates gets increased to about 142 DPS, but this gap is much more likely to be closed by Searing Shot.
- Greatly reduce the cooldown of Searing Shot such that Priests must choose between Wands for mana efficiency and stats, or Bows for damage. Alternatively, reduce its numbers a bit and convert it to a passive ability, or an auto-castable with no cooldown, that affects all auto-shots. In either of these implementations, Night Elf Priests will be able to item-swap between their Bow when they want more damage, and their Wand when they want to recover mana through Wand Spec. These effects could be attached to an Improved Searing Shot Discipline talent.
- Add some more Bow-synergetic abilities. Examples:
- Smite (bow) and Holy Fire (bow), which work similarly to the non-bow spells (same cost, shared cooldown for Holy Fire), but add a %weapon damage physical component to their damage in addition to a shot visual. This would also look very cool: your arrow hits, and the target gets smacked by flames from above !
- Tears of the Moon: all nearby enemies are struck by an arrow falling from the sky. This is reminiscent of the Priestess of the Moon's ultimate ability from WC3, wherein she channeled for 40 seconds while comets fell onto her enemies.
But this would really make me want to role it when patch hits!
