Kethgar

It's too early to make any concrete comments, but I hope I'm not the only druid here who is worried about our healing potential in arena, as a solo healer against teams with a death knight. We're the only healing class out there that can not remove diseases - and death knights are a disease based class. Consider the following two abilities:

Degeneration does damage, consumes a HoT to dramatically increase damage taken and prevents all further HoTs from working. Crypt fever causes diseases to reduce your stats by 6% per disease, considering death knights can stack 5+ diseases on a target, that's a 30+% stat reduction. When your team mate has 30% reduced stamina, takes dramatically increased damage and can not be HoTted, a short CC chain on you will probably make your team mate die.

 

kalbear

CoH is useless for raid healing on a regular basis. Healing everyone in the raid for 1500 every 8 seconds doesn't help keep up a group.

PoH only helps your group. That's fine if you know ahead of time who is going to be taking the raid damage, but it's not that useful for raid healing for most cases.

Flash heal is an inefficient single target heal. If you're using this for raid healing, you might as well bring a pally. But it is fast, and with the crit emphasis it might be good enough.

Binding heal only helps if you've taken damage. It's useful, but it's not a great tool for raid healing and can lead to some expensive overheals.

Renew can't heal fast enough; there was a great discussion about how inefficient renew is compared to CoH just the other day in the priest thread.

Ideally, raid healing needs to be fast; most raid healing cannot afford to do a gheal, as gheals aren't all that good unless you can have them in the pipe and being cast proactively. It needs to potentially affect multiple targets either simultaneously or close to it. The closest spell in there that applies is Flash heal and PoH when it applies.

I see what you're saying - all of those spells are great, and they have their own niche uses. Heck, so does guardian spirit. But none compare in any way to chain heal, and it's not really even close. If a progression guild needs raid healing, they'll put a shaman in that role as it stands. If they don't have a shaman, it looks like they'd put a druid in instead. And that's fine; that just means that the role of a priest as a raid healer is suboptimal. That's okay too; resto shamans are suboptimal MT healers compared to other classes. The problem I have with this is that priest have become hugely suboptimal in this role to the point where they're likely a detriment to progression if forced into it.

But hey, enjoy the druid's new role as a raid healer. Should be fun.

 

Tyrian

You should reread what the druid poster mentioned on the previous page. What might currently be a solo priest coh-spambot role, can now be somewhat shifted into a multi-class effort between druid + priest etc. How exactly is this a bad thing? Hasnt everyone agreed that solo-spambot methods of playing (spam Coh, spam chain heal etc) are not good class design - nor are encounters that essentially require them?

 

Malan

Talking about a spell being "useless" because of a change in an alpha client, without complete knowledge of a) how the spell will look at release and b) what all the new stuff that class is getting to offset the change, is monumentally stupid.

I assume that one of the following is true about anyone making such claims:
1) They're not in the alpha, and are making broad sweeping assumptions about shit they don't know about and should shut up about it.
2) They are in the alpha and are violating their NDA and should shut the hell up about it.

Summary: making judgment calls about how a spell will be used at lvl 80 in the face of what we know right now is really dumb.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Flamingcloud

How about we just bury our heads in the sand until wotlk releases then?

 

Malan

How about we engage in reasonable discussion using information we have available instead? ie, "hey guys with an 8 sec CD the HPS of XYZ spell is ABCD" instead of making statements like "wow this spell sucks, nobody will ever use this build again, gg blizz gg."

[e] See the post below this for a good example of reasonable inference based on the information available.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

lairpie

Perhaps the encounters are being designed with the idea that a CoH, a Flourish, and a cast or two of chain heal fulfills the needed amount of burst raid healing. I'm seeing things like:
-Big splash of fire damage hits the melee.
-CoH hits them right away bringing them back up enough to not be on the verge of death.
-Flourish on the melee
-Some combination of PW:S, PoM, Flash heal, chain heal brings the extra low people back up.
-Druids hots and a swiftmend keep the tank alive while the priest that was belting out greater heals is tending to the melee
-Flourish / chain heal bounces from the tank to people top everyone off.

Repeat.

I still don't know what paladins are going to do, but Priests, druids, and shaman all fit in very nicely together now, and from what we've seen still will, the priests will just be using more of their abilities and doing a bit more on the tanks, where the druids will do a bit more on raid damage and a bit less on tanks. Obviously my scenario is as hypothetical as anyone else's but I think figuring out ways to use the full range of 8 healers spells together is as productive a use of out time as anything else.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Flamingcloud

There is a large difference between calling a spell useless with the information we have, and going "this spell sucks, gg blizz gg". You yourself said "making judgement calls [is really dumb]" but any reasonable discussion using the available information will have judgments and biases in them.

 

Wunlastri

You...don't remember vanilla wow? Personally aside from the sting of agility only giving one RAP and crit scaled like a warriors, I believe hunters are fine. But those bug me only because I had so much time with agility being a god stat that I just can't let go of the past.

 

levk

Paladins are going to shout of the crusader and lay down some sick consecration ticks admiring the pink armor.

Seriously there's plenty of examples of wide raid damage before CoH (ony, rag, vael, drakes, huhu, faerlina and so on). And besides, it opens up possibilities for blizzard as well as the players, if they don't do this, they'll have to assume you bring this many priests all of whom spec CoH when they design encounters, which of course means they actually have to spec that or run Kara for remainder of eternity.

 

lairpie

I just got weird looks for laughing at work thinking about how far things have come from killing Vael with 8 priests spamming CoH, 4 druids with 2 alternating regrowth and 2 alternating Healing touch, and some paladins still busy spamming whisper cast and maybe a heal or two in there somewhere. I would never have thought then that we'd be here talking about delicately weaving 10 different spells from 4 different classes to counter damage we haven't even seen yet.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Northerner

It really isn't idiotic though. Don't misunderstand me, treating rampant speculation as gospel is indeed really dumb but presuming that alpha information is not related to the final form of things is equally silly. We can indeed make some judgment calls about how a spell will be used at level 80, presuming that we are aware that things will be different. I can make inferences about a spell effect in an encounter I've never seen and will probably be somewhat accurate if not spot on. This extends just fine to player abilities as well.

This is the what we are all wishing for I imagine and is a much more reasonable stance. Still, there is a huge difference between random whining and concerns based on the present spell data. I've been through both the original closed beta and the TBC beta (where I respected the information rules) and it seems to me that what we see now has a very high chance of reaching Live in some form in due course. To pretend that Blizzard is some paragon of flexibility when faced with tester feedback simply isn't backed by the historical precedents.

We shall see what we shall see though of course and I certainly am not going to jump on some sort of whiny bandwagon.

 

Tuftears

Is it okay to speculate about what kinds of changes might be made for the currently omitted classes?

My two cents: right now it rather sucks to be a paladin healer stuck with healing a party-damage-intensive instance. I'm betting that the holy tree will get a pretty significant revamp, so you'll unlock new spells that will change how you heal. Non-holy paladins will be stuck with plain vanilla paladin healing spells.

Example: (warning! Made up, not alpha leaked info!)
31 points - Holy Shock on a 6-second cooldown, instead of 30 seconds, with an improved talent to bring it down to 4 seconds.
41 points - Seal of Blinding Light, reduces your enemy's attack speed by 4%, stacking debuff up to 5 times. When judged, heals your party within 30 yards (40 with the aura range increase talent) and does holy damage to the target equal to a Holy Shock of the same level.
51 points - Divine Illumination now, instead of reducing the mana cost of your next spell by 50%, makes your next healing spell affect the entire party within 30 yards (40, etc.), or your next direct-target damaging spell becomes a 10-yard radius AOE, excepting Consecration and Holy Wrath

Note that this is just conjecture, but if I were a dev, I'd be definitely looking at giving paladins some AOE healing capabilities, something they've been smarting for, for a long time, and boosting their very anemic instant heals.

The druid healer changes, by comparison, seem like they could overwhelm with the number of HoTs you could be responsible for managing. With spells like Nourish (increased healing if Rejuv is on the target), Flourish (AOE HoT), Replenish (makes Flourish and Rejuvenation able to increase your target's mana/energy/rage/runic power), and with tree healers needing to remember if they have Barkskin up on a target or not in order to gain the extra healing... In a typical party you're going to have the DPS demanding that you keep Rejuvenation or Flourish on them in addition to your normal healing duties.

Actually given Flourish is an AOE, that might not be so bad if you're just dealing with melee DPS, the mana increase might not be so essential for the casters. It's got a 10-sec cycle so you'd rejuv and 3x lifebloom the MT, and Flourish a target rogue every 10 seconds. That should leave some spare cycles for throwing a Nourish, if that proves (as I expect) superior in mana efficiency to Healing Touch.

Hmm. Will trees be able to throw Nourish?

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

lairpie

Yes as per the description of Tree of Life that was mined.

There isn't really a reason to keep track of whether bark's blessing (as opposed to bark skin, which is a self buff) is on the target. Like its nice, but generally its going to be perpetually up on tanks from your hots, and anyone else its not a big enough deal to matter.

We all (all meaning not remotely all, but a decent portion) had replenish in our 2t3 set, and while its nice, its not really enough that you're going to constantly put it on people just to get them the procs unless you're bored. I would guess flourish will cost too much mana to be chain casting it unless its actually needed as a heal. A few things like enrages though it might be worth it for that little bit of extra damage.

Brewmaster of WBC

 

Addled

To be fair, the role of a priest as a healer has been declining ever since TBC launch. You wanted priests in vanilla WoW because they were clearly the best, most versatile healers, period. Sure, Alliance side took paladins for buffs and their healing, and Horde took shamans for their buffs and healing, and both sides took druids so they would get Mark, but your healing core was always priests.

That changed in BC, where hybrids became a lot more useful. They were mana efficient (paladins with a ton of spell crit and 100% Illumination), had a wide range of buffs (totems, auras, and blessings), and had an easier time staying alive against raid damage and loose mobs. If anything, early 25man raids tried to stack hybrids to maximize the buffing.

And so I completely agree with you. I see the priest talent trees, and my immediate response is "meh". Raids will probably carry 1 priest with 23/48 spec for imp DS, and then stack shadow priests for the regen, and hybrids for healing. Even if raid-wide damage is reduced, shamans can still do some pretty impressive single-target healing, plus they keep up Ancestral Healing for extra armor. And then shamans still have Bloodlust and totems. Raiders want to stack hybrids because they bring extra blessings/combat rezzes/totems to a raid; there's no point to stacking priests since just 1 priest can buff up Fort, Shadow Prot and Imp DS.

 

Cube

In all honesty, I don't really have a problem with forcing druids to have to manage more than what we're managing now.

Right now, it's fairly trivial, if a bit latency dependent, to keep up 3 full lifebloom stacks on 3 tanks and 2 rejuvs up on 2 of them(or other people). A swiftmend in response to a tank spike can disrupt this cycle, but that happens rarely with a good healing setup. I don't see this changing that much-the bark blessing happens automatically, and lasts longer than a lifebloom, so if we're keeping up lifebloom stacks, the buff will stay up. The new HoTs seem like they'll make druid healing a bit more dynamic than it is currently, because they'll force us to choose the proper HoTs to use in the proper situations, rather than the "Keep up everything" situation that the class currently has.

I also don't think that trees really can keep rejuv up on group members in even a 5-man. It takes too many spare GCD's to keep up 5 rejuvs at once as well as lifebloom on the tank and any other emergency heals necessary.

As for Nourish... I think it'll replace swiftmend for most uses, and swiftmend will become our main "oshit" button before a NS/Max rank HT combo. It'll really depend on the cooldowns and how we need to manage that.

 

Lanlaorn

Lol, cry me a river, trying pvping as a priest, aka the only class that can't remove poisons.

Not being able to remove viper sting, crippling poison, wound poison and the occasional mind numbing poison is terrible and yet Blizzard was content to let it be. Frankly it's about time they added more diseases besides the once in a blue moon Devouring Plague, and I wish they'd go further.

Maybe make Mortal Strike and Hamstring a disease (lore or rationality be damned)? Impossible of course, Warriors demand their special 'physical' abilities that for some reason must be sacrosanct, but ah well.

 

orcsgotbooty

Why must you continue the crying and bring it to a whole other level? You do realize warriors would be worthless without ms? See all those fury warriors on arena teams...o wait /facepalm

 

Wunlastri

Moving on past us taking jabs at each other.... have they updated pets at all in the expansion alpha? I wonder if they are going to bring out new abilities or just rank up the existing ones. Well, I'm pretty sure new ones are coming the real questions is how viable in endgame they will be. Eitehr way, I'll be needing a large stable lest I feel like discarding my current farm.

 

SanSul

It looks like we are directly heading to the same priest situation that plagued much of early TBC. Paladins heal faster, and for a fraction of the mana. Druids are much better at maintaining multiple targets. Shamans are the masters of fast aoe heals. Priests could simply be redesigned to focus more on abilities like Power word shield. So instead of a heal, everyone gets a strong but very brief shield, or other damage reduction abilities, as seen with pain suppression.

With the changes to spirit so broad, I guess you will want one priest atleast...which is likely to be shadow at something like 23/0/X or whatever, haven't really examined the priest tree. Anyways, its a lot of speculation, but there may be things at 80 that we can't even anticipate, like what happened with TBC. We had the emergence of super strong combos like vampiric embrace + healadin. Besides, don't priests get a free heal on mortal striked targets in holy? Maybe priests will be the only healers capable of long boss fights that apply MS on a wide scale, where other healers would run out of mana, priests wouldn't.

 

Cranberry

I don't believe that's been datamined. Anyone from the Alpha would be NDA'd.

 

Anaram

There is really only problem with priest as raid healer come Wotlk with the current "known" things: Chain heal is better.

If chain heal gets reined in, there's really quite little to complain about CoH. Currently only two classes have proper raid heals: priest and shaman. Druid can mostly complement them (as hots are too slow) and are in no way necessary for that role while paladin is just plain bad.

The number of shamans being brought in currently is quite disproportionate so I would be very surprised if Blizzard didn't do something to move away from bloodlust/chainheal/totem combination to make room for something else (and perhaps even less healers overall in raid as 4 out of 27 specs are currently taking 30-40% of raid spots).

I wouldn't call the death of the priest as raid healer until we see 70-80 skills and paladin & shaman talents.

 

kalbear

Well, that's why I said 'as it stands'. Heck, if shamans are nerfed heavily enough holy nova might become vaguely viable as a spam healing method, though it'd likely be in disc, not in holy.

No, it's impossible to say what the role of the priest is going to be in WotLK. It's impossible to say whether or not CoH is absolutely the best thing since sliced bread, since it could be that every single major boss fight does 1500-2000 damage every 3 seconds which must be healed immediately to the entire raid, and the raid must stand in a 30 yard area at all times. That's possible. But it's not very likely.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

It also depends on how much mana healing will consume in Wrath. Right now throughput is superior to efficiency by a longshot. Before Burning Crusade came out we mostly just concerned ourselves with mana efficiency.

It's quite possible that the things we're concerned with now won't be the main priority going forward.

 

Talgog

You think that World of Raids/MMO Champion and similar sites have anywhere near the resources to deal with corporate litigation? Or that they would want to pay to do so? This is a major, major corporation here. Even a gaming magazine would be dogmeat if they were sued over NDA (i.e. helping someone party to the NDA violate it/encouraging them to do so, etc). Defending big-firm litigation is nightmarishly expensive.

Of course they are going to cave. It would be stupid not to. Finding out that Blizzard can't shut you down isn't worth the six figure legal bill.