A blue went up today about the changes to dispels in Cataclysm. My shadow priest friend claims that priests have had an OP advantage with Mass Dispel and a magic dispel that gets of both offensive and defensive magic, but I’ve always thought the whole one-sided thing with shaman Purge is strange. Apparently, though, we’re all going one-sided!

Here are the changes we’re looking at:

• Druids will be able to dispel defensive magic, curses, and poison.
• Paladins will be able to dispel defensive magic, diseases, and poison.
• Priests will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and disease.
• Shaman will be able to dispel defensive magic, offensive magic, and curses.

What’s this mean for priests? Not a lot, really.

Druids got magic, great. I don’t play paladins, so I’m not sure what occurred there. Shamans got a boost to Purge, woot. Shamans also lost poisons and diseases… that’s a sad panda.

You could say, “But wait!–Holy priests lost the ability to remove poisons on themselves!” but they’ve already reassured that Body and Soul will remain the same. Score. Dispels also cannot be mashed anymore (they’ll go off whether there’s something to dispel or not), and this makes me excited concerning mashing is just a bad mechanic in general. I like smart dispeling.

Shadow priests lost the ability to remove diseases, and while I could complain about that, I interpreted that more as, “So now you have to have a healing paladin or priest on a boss fight with disease.” And that, to me, is just jiffy.

Except wait!

That means we’ll be interchangeable with paladins! Nooooo, don’t make me Discipline!