MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Upcoming Priest Changes

2008-09-11 13:16:00

Holy

- We're going to make Holy Concentration scale with spell crit instead of just a flat %
- Divine Hymn now does a short duration heal over time effect in addition to it's crowd-control capability, and is now baked into a lot of Holy talents (Holy Reach, Divine Providence etc.)
- We improved Blessed Recovery so that it now works like Ignite (Mage), where each crit gets added into the periodic heal over time and refreshes the duration.
- Lightwell - You can now see how many charges are left in the Lightwell by clicking on it.

Discipline

- Grace will now provide 2% healing for the Priest, stacks up 3 times. So 6% increased healing taken from that target who has Grace (but only by you, the Priest).
- Twin Disciplines will now work with Mind Flay.

Shadow

- Shadow Resilience re-designed. Now called Mind Melt - Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Mind Blast spells by 2/4%.
- Shadow Power: Now 20/40/60/80/100% critical strike damage bonus, also works with Mind Flay.
- Improved Shadowform - The chance to remove all movement impairing effects when you Fade is now restored.
- Psychic Horror - Redesigned. Now reduces all damage done by targets when Psychic Scream ends by 15/30%. Lasts 6 sec.
- Dispersion - 90% damage reduction is restored.
- Misery - Now has 5/10/15% bonus spell power to Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Mind Blast.

[ Post edited by Koraa ]

Class Designer

Koraa

2008-09-11 13:27:31

Re: Upcoming Priest Changes

Q u o t e:
My god... we must have whined a lot. I can't recall that you've ever told us ahead of time about your plans for the Priest class, apart from a few sentences in the alpha.

Seriously, we'd all love to read something about the philosophy behind the Priest trees and healing in general, on the order of what Ghostcrawler wrote up for DKs/Paladins/Warriors and the state of tanking.

About the only design goals we've ever read are "Disc PvE == single target throughput" and "Holy PvE == best AoE healing". And those were from the early days of the alpha forum.

Discipline - About damage mitigation, utility and single target HPS. It's intended to be a better tank healer.

Holy - Good single target healer, but more healing utility. Intended to be the AOE healer, or the healer than can react to any situation. Only spec of a class that has an on demand HoT, AOE, Lightwell which players can click to heal themselves, a flash heal, a large greater heal.

Shadow - Obviously a single target sustained DPS, with Mind Sear now should be one of the strongest AOE classes.

Class Designer

Koraa

2008-09-11 13:37:34

Re: Upcoming Priest Changes

Q u o t e:
Questions:

Holy Concentration, how does it scale with crit, on par with 1% crit giving a 1% chance, and does it include talents like Holy Specialization so that we would start with a base of 5% with that talent alone?

Lightwell, what kind of click? Right click uses it, left click gives you information?

Twin Disciplines, Penance, come onnnnnnn you know you wanna add Penance too. Wait that was a statement sort of.

Psychic Horror, so no more horror effect, but when fear is broken/done they deal 30% less damage for 6 seconds. Is that a magic debuff on the target?

Can add Penance.

Psychic Horror - Replaces the Horror effect, there were too many issues with it. One was players were confused with what it meant, one was it was too good in some cases, and it had no real PvE benefit. While the new version isn't the same, it has uses the old version didn't have.

Holy Concentration - Still not sure on the final numbers, I'll get back to you on that.

Lightwell - You right click the well and it has a buff showing how many charges it has, similar to Inner Fire.

Class Designer

Koraa

2008-09-11 13:41:21

Re: Upcoming Priest Changes

Q u o t e:

Druids? :s they are able to cast Healing Touch in treeform once again. And it's not like Flourish is that far behind in overall healing because most of its healing is applied up-front.

I applaud the IHC change, but holy still has a long way to go before it prevents me from main switching to a restoration druid. Their talent trees are straight-up superior, and they have raid utility (innervate, battle res, 3% healing to raid). Also mana efficiency is very important with the downranking change - simply read the reports of any priest who has been to Naxxramas.

The feedback is the polar opposite of when I did Naxx recently... we couldn't spend our mana fast enough. I suspect the pre-made gear blows for PvE. We were using level 78-80 quest/dungeon/heroic blues.

Class Designer

Koraa

2008-09-11 13:50:29

Re: Upcoming Priest Changes

Q u o t e:
Misery - Still going to be skipped if some personal incentive isn't re-added.

Oh, forgot Misery. It has 5/10/15% bonus spell power to Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Mind Sear.

Class Designer

Koraa