Talent update: Priests - Blue Tracker

#1 - Dec. 7, 2011, 11:26 p.m.

First thing I noticed is that our Level 87 skill is a little redundant-- we have fade already, AND we have dispersion for shadow, and now we can go invisible... very briefly? If anyone can come up with a cool use for this, please help me out here.

If anybody has any ideas for what would belong here instead, let's put some down.

"Hymn of Shadows: (10s channeled) All party or raid members souls are cast into shadow, giving them shadow form, X% resistance to damage, X% increased haste and X% increased damage. All of the priest's damage or healing over time effects are refreshed every 2 seconds of the cast". It would be great to have an ability that lets us share our temporary durability and also help out the raid-- it would have to be on a big CD, obviously.

Speaking of Hymns, Shadow loses the two hymns it used to have access to, and Disc loses Divine Hymn. No more emergency healing for shadow, and Disc is screwed out of another AOE heal. This is worse for Disc, but makes shadow priests less useful.

Still missing:

Shadow still missing Devouring Plague. Also, dark archangel no longer restores mana, removing one of our best mana CDs. :'( Otherwise shadow is looking mostly the way it was before, though it is missing most of its passives, and only kept shadowy apparition and pain and suffering.

Disc still looks like a work in progress-- no references to atonement, and it lost its only spammable AOE heal (and its healing CD). Before anybody mentions "Holy Nova" lets try and imagine what life would be like healing with only that to cover raid/AOE damage. Go ahead, try it. Did you have a stroke yet?

Disc also lost Binding Heal, so we can't heal ourselves and someone else anymore, and Desperate Prayer is supposedly an "optional" choice, so we are being asked to possibly go without that as well.

Spirit shell could be cool, and is clearly Disc's new "heal"... except for its name-- I feel like "spirit" references belong more in Shaman abilities.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#16 - Dec. 8, 2011, 2:01 a.m.

12/07/2011 05:00 PMPosted by Flaire
as a holy priest I'm very bummed about losing Holy Nova.

I think Holy Nova is being reworked to be Disc's aoe heal while Holy gets to keep Prayer of Healing.

We are exploring the possibility of Holy Nova being Discipline’s AE and Prayer of Healing being Holy’s AE. Divine Aegis would be changed to work with Holy Nova and we would make other changes that make sense to support this change.

Our intent is to make the healing styles between the two as different as possible, while cutting down on the number of rarely-used-yet-core spells that each spec has. By that, we mean that some spells are designed to be situational, such as Fade or Leap of Faith. When you look at Holy Nova in 4.3, it feels like a spell you should use a lot, but the situations just don’t come up often where another spell isn’t better.

In 4.3, Holy Nova doesn’t have a really strong niche, and priests have so many AE heals that we’re not convinced the right call is to make Holy Nova used in X situation and Prayer of Healing used in Y situation. It might just be that priests have too many AE heals.

As with nearly all of the talent design though, this might very well change before we go live.

Your feedback is appreciated.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#494 - March 6, 2012, 7:43 p.m.

We've been following this thread (and others) very closely. Here are a few notes regarding where we currently are in Mists priest development.

Prayer of Healing can be used by Holy and Discipline once again. We realized that the goal of making Holy Nova an effective AE healing tool was problematic. It meant that we would have to change Holy Nova so thoroughly, that it was becoming a second Prayer of Healing. Remember: we aren’t even in beta yet, and we want to retain as much opportunity as possible to respond to player feedback throughout the rest of this process. Things will change for priests, and every other class, over the coming weeks.

There is some speculation that Discipline is intended only as a PvP spec or only as a tank-healing spec. Neither of those is our design intent. Both Holy and Discipline should be effective at group healing or single-target healing, and if we do our jobs right, both can have a role in PvP. The main difference between them is that Discipline relies more on absorption mechanics, such as Power Word: Shield, Power Word: Barrier, Divine Aegis and the new Spirit Shell. Holy priests should place more emphasis on heals over time and have more area healing mechanics (e.g. Circle of Healing, Holy Word: Sanctuary), but those are intended to offset the incredible benefit of absorbs and not to make Holy the only option for handling AE damage. We see both in use a lot in PvE in Cataclysm, and we intend for that model to continue.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#518 - March 6, 2012, 10:44 p.m.

03/06/2012 11:58 AMPosted by Ångel
So does that leave Holy Nova on the cutting-room floor, or is it just going to remain like it is now, useable by both specs, but never really used?

At this time, we don't have an update on Holy Nova for Mists of Pandaria.

03/06/2012 12:18 PMPosted by Kriv
Will Prayer of Healing still be restricted to affecting one group per cast or will it be a "smart" heal that prioritizes on health of those around you similar to Wild Growth?

It looks like Prayer of Healing is going to continue to work as it does today.

also give binding heal back to disc as well...

There is certainly a chance. At the moment, Discipline doesn't have Binding Heal because we want the specs to play differently (not just vary by Circle of Healing vs. Penance and similar spec spells).

This is excellent feedback, and will be even more valuable in the beta. Thank you.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#524 - March 6, 2012, 11:14 p.m.

03/06/2012 01:52 PMPosted by Anarri
This, friends, is why we need to be vocal about things as early as we possibly can.

I respectfully disagree.

As I said above, there is a difference between feedback that comes from pure imagination ("I've not played this yet, but I can guess how it might feel") and feedback that comes from hours and hours of actual gameplay. The latter is much more preferable and helpful, and can only be gotten during beta testing.

We recognize that change is always scary. It’s probably impossible for us to make a change that is universally acclaimed by all players (or even just one group of players, such as priests). We try to make the best decisions for the class, and that includes seeking feedback from interested players, but these things are perpetually a work in progress, and not everyone can be pleased.

Kaivax

Community Manager

#536 - March 6, 2012, 11:35 p.m.

03/06/2012 03:24 PMPosted by Flaire
This is a complicated position you're putting us in here. We can't test the content because it's not in beta yet, but we can't offer ANY feedback because it's not as useful as beta feedback?

He was disagreeing about the as early as possible part.

Saying that they are just as likely to change things in Beta as in Alpha.

Atleast that is what I took from it.

Correct.