There are 40 debuff slots in TBC. SW:Pain costs 25 mana for 18 seconds.

There's arguments against going that deep in Discipline. But saying that the 5% DPS boost to casters isn't worth the debuff slot or mana is silly.

The thing that makes me giggle is that if Prayer of Mending was the 41 point talent and circle of renewal was the new spell the bitching would be reversed from "Specing Holy is useless" to "Now I'm forced to spec 41 points into Holy, thanks Blizzard."

I've never been too impressed with spiritual healing and guidance. It's essentially +200 heal for me, and there isn't much difference between a 1900 and 2100 hp heal for me when there's only like 3 encounters in the game where our tank ever dips below 80% anyways. The more +heal I've gotten, the more I've had to downrank just in order to get heals off without half of it ending up being overhealing.

Anyways...

The shield reflect thing will be nice for a pre-shielding thing and is more or less just an added bonus. It's essentially adding 40-60 DPS to the raid per priest, and that's if you just cast it on the MT. However, on any mob that pulses a damaging AE in the first 10 seconds of the fight it's a little front-loaded free DPS. Certainly nothing astounding, but a relatively free 3-5k damage right off the bat can't hurt. And if you keep casting it whenever it pops, given a mob with steady AE damage, that's an easy ~150 raid dps if you just keep spamming PW:S whenever it pops on a tank/rogue/whatever.

Keep in mind there will probably be a new rank, and I'm going to assume it'd prevent around 1200 dmg pre-talents/augmentation based on the current spell line.

Anyways...

As for the holy talent, what would be relaly cool is if instead of the current lame duck thing it's got going on, it was a 25% chance when critically healing someone that the recipiants next attack caused 800 threatless holy damage or something. Essentially the same thing but far less having to re-target and use up a global cooldown to use.

Actually I bet you wouldn't, Vhex, considering the state our 31 pt talents are in atm, I think there would be more priests overjoyed than you think to actually have a 41 pt talent that you would want to take.

And @ Steel again:
The unfortunate realization is that priests are more or less having to regain ground because of the change in allowing us to downrank. I didn't come to a forum to whine; it was a thread about the priest talents, and I offered my opinion and got slammed into the ground because people who don't even play priests see nothing wrong with them.

I didn't expect much; as a hunter or as a priest I expected not much of anything, but what I got was less. A fundamental current change to priest raiding, so these so-called "powerful" holy talents are only gaining us some ground now that downranking is no longer possible. More powerful flash heals and gheals, which we'll have to bank on more that have less efficiency than using lower rank heal spells.

I agree that we are semi putting the cart before the horse, but that's what first impressions are all about, no?

You mentioned options, but it's not really creating options for us, whatsoever. Just more talent points that will probably be spent in talents we previously didn't have enough points for. Pvp priests have options, Shadow priests have options...pure healing priests get thrown a couple of talents that basically add more +healing and a group renew that may or may not be awesome.

I think most classes would be in a sad state if everyone just hung up their issues and took what was given them; many a change has been made because of the community's opinion on it. Here's hoping the CMs are reading this forum.

Then those priests are idiots. I'd -much- rather have all the nice, important abilities be trainable, and the talents just be extra things for kicks and giggles. Mind Flay and Silence should be trainable, period. I slash my wrists and swear blood othes agaisnt Tigole every day in hopes that my voodoo powers will smite him for the travesty of those abilities being unavailable to my holy nova/PI spec.

PI, Spiritual Guidance, VE, etc...etc...these are all gimicky enough that if I want to spec for them I can with almost no loss in overall performance which is honestly the way it should be.

Don't you think that having holy talents powerful enough to compensate for losing downranking deep in the tree is...BAD?! That would mean that any priest who wanted to raid would have to spec into those. And that's not what Blizzard wants. If anything, the compensation should be innate, not in the Holy tree.

Because bringing a Shaman or Paladin who heals just as well/better and has overall more of a raid benefit wouldn't be better?

I see it as a complete waste of talent points, that does nothing to help my role in a raid. At least they could have put all the Damage junk in 1 tree, all the Healing Junk in 1 tree (oh wait what heal stuff lol.) and the Mana Regen stuff (oh they must have missed that. back to chugging pots for me!) in 1 tree. Instead we got a nonsensical mishmash, with 1 worthwhile 41 point talent - which isn't the pos that is group renew.

At least Shaman Dualwielding with Shamanistic Rage helps his main role in the raid - they gain mana at an increased rate, which allows them to heal more.


EDIT:

If they want all the healers to have "more" of a role on raids - they're going to have to revamp itemization entirely - including the stupid +heal mechanic, and include +damage/healing with the +healing for us to even consider using precious mana that we don't regen outside of spirit on any damage.

If all "Priest" gear had 1/2 or 1/3rd of the +heal as +dmg, and somehow we got a +100% to crit bonus, then maybe I could see using mana on nukes, once in a while. But as it stands? No way, not now.

Completely disagree. If you want to heal well, you should have to be specced for it.

One of the biggest complaints with Blessed Recovery is that a crit after the ability was triggered would overwrite the first buff and reset the timer:

Rogue's Ambush crits you for 1500.
You gain Blessed Recovery.
Rogue's Offhand crits you for 4.
You gain Blessed Recovery.
You gain 1 health from Blessed Recovery.

Now, after the first crit, you become complete immune to crits for 6 seconds, so Recovery gets its full effect. without interruption. In addition, the durations are the same as Martyrdom, so there's no interference to be had.

These don't strike me as odd at all. They represent more ways to survive the /assist train in PVP that so many priests complain about.

Now we're kind of back to the argument over whether everything should be mediocre for the sake of more (possibly less meaningful) diversity or if things should be so powerful that certain specs become the new defacto "flavor(s) of the day". As I mentioned earlier in the thread, personally I'd prefer incentive to actually dig deep into a tree for new stuff than use mediocre top end talents as an excuse to just blow most of my new points on more pre-expansion talents.

Personally, I think the 41 pt talents should have played to the weakness of a particular specialization... stuff you got to because you were specializing and hey look, one more point there that props up the whole build. They kind of did that with Shadow by giving us a shadow based flash heal. But I question whether they really did that for Holy or Disc... if anything, I kind of think Pain Suppression should have been a Holy talent as it'd play to the vulnerability most deep Holy priests feel both in soloing and pvp situations... rather than gibbing in a lame angelic "oh gd it the priest just died again" form, we'd actually be able to pop something and laugh in the face of imminent doom for a whole 8 seconds. Disc already had Inner Fire to begin with afterall.

On the other hand, I'm not really sure what would prop up Discipline as it was already turned into such a hybrid build it didn't have much in the way of inherent failings (IMO it's basically equally as good at healing/damage/survivability as it was equally poor for each of those). Although Misery certainly gives that tree the one thing it was lacking that Holy and Shadow already had which is raid wide benefits (if you can really compare it to Lightwell anyway... it certain compares well to Shadow Weaving).

I think overall there are some baby steps that are generally good... I like the new toolbox heals we're getting. I like the Shades spell as it's more fire and forget damage we can contribute to any encounter particularly since it's so visually apparent which is just fun for class recognition... although the cooldown seems a bit high maybe.

But overall I still get the distinct feeling there's alot of blindfolds and dartboards at work behind the scenes when it comes to Priests.

I mean hell, look at that 3rd tier of Disc talents... they STILL don't flow right... you still have to take a single point in a multi point talent just to get down to tier four. And wtf Blessed Resilience?

Sorry for not quoting, but I recall a remark about not wanting too many priests to spec for the Misery debuff because it doesn't stack, redundancy, yadda yadda.

Presuming an ideal raid (I know, I know), you're only going to have 3 priests. Even if they all spec for Misery (insert joke here), that's not as huge an overlap as you'd have in a "modern" raid where having 8 priests isn't an oddity (especially so on druid-poor servers/in druid-poor guilds).

If you have 5 priests on roster, and they split their specs two or three ways, the pointlessness of additional Miserys becomes the practicality of having a backup.

Moving on...

As regards Shadow Mend, I'm presuming the point is that it's a heal you can cast while shadowform. How many times in a raid would a shadow priest get yelled at for letting the MT die? Considering the IDEA here is to diversify specs in a raid environment, allowing shadowFORM priests to not be useless outside of PW:S during clutch moments ("omgno the tank got crit!" / "omgno the healers are OOM" / "omgno the healers are MC'd"). It's like deadliness, I think, in the subtlety tree. It's not designed to be the new "killer" or must-have talent. It's designed to bring a spec for a class with a primary role into the same general league as the others, even if it's border-line bush league versus Babe Ruth.

As regards downranking, the "alleged" decrease in stamina item budget cost, plus who knows how much base HP per level, if you're healing (and these are someone else's "what if" numbers) people with 10-25k HP, and presumably the DPS they're taking in a raid environment will be nontrivial such even with +1000 healing, the old Heal2 wasn't going to cut the mustard anyway. How is this a big deal? The infinite healer, I think, was not by design (and I think the enrage/berserk mechanic is designed specifically against it). So now encounters will have a variable that hasn't existed since sometime around halfway through MC (pre ZG).

(And yes, I'm aware healers can go OOM in a number of situations now, but the endurence of everyone just chain casting Heal2/HT4 is insane).

As regards one priest per raid, yadda yadda we can mathcraft all day, someone's going to have the "best" heal on paper. However, a druid has two HoTs they can throw on a target, innervate, and crez. Amazing skills all around. A priest has PW:S, PoH, and Flash Heal. While a swiftmend macro can emulate FH, it's that's like saying an apple can emulate an orange. If you're hungry, you don't care, but eventually you'll get to a rotten core. PW:S is preemptive healing, nothing emulates it. While PoH isn't the bees knees, when you need it, nothing else will do. In short, druids tend to be later later, priests tend to be now now. Both are great, and both are complimentary.

This would be the case for Hybrid classes.

But an actual "Healer" Class? No.

Interesting that Mass dispel will work on Ice block, soul link, maybe trueshot aura?

I actually think swiftment compares more to PW:S than to flash heal. It's more of an "oh shit" button than anything, heals for 1-2k (which PW:S can be the equivalent of a 2k heal if the target is mortally struck). Both have cooldowns, and both have drawbacks of some sort, druid's being that it requires a HoT already on the target, priest's being weakened soul. Flash Heal is more comparable to Regrowth imo.

The idea that you should have to spec for healing to be good at healing is a sucky-ass everquest idea that belongs in the trash heap alongside everquest itself. Look at warriors in the current game. They are probably the least broken class in the game because they all spec how they goddamn want and you still know that warrior means "monopolist tank with insane damage". That's how you make a successful class that people want to play and never want to refuse from a group, guild, or raid. I don't know how you can look at warriors and then draw the opposite conclusion about priests, that there should be such an excessive need for division and specialization. What priests need is similar to what they're getting, and that's for different builds to share the wealth.

The problem I see is that the wealth still isn't spread around very well. The healing at the top of shadow is in the right vein of what it needs, (eg., druid HotW and moonglow) but I'm not sure it's hit the nail on the head. Healing in shadowform, too gimmicky, to simple. It should be more disguised, something more along the lines of spiritual guidance or HotW. Example, a 5 point talent that refunds your mana when you crit any spell. A talent that converts your +dmg into mana regen. A talent that refunds mana when you take damage. Things like these can let shadow spec priests feel worthwhile healing without necessarily letting them heal while in shadowform.

Disc isn't bad as I already would feel guilty not spending lots of points there.

With holy, you have some groundwork with spiritual guidance, which should serve as a model talent for the devs. Again, the goal here is just the opposite of the shadow tree, let holy priests feel like they can work toward becoming better healers without staying stagnant at everything else. The instant cast smite thing is nice but it probably needs to proc way more often, as even in the ideal situation you're only casting holy nova on 10 things, and then not even getting a free smite most of the time. But overall the goal should, again, not be to think of things in terms of 'makes you x% better at healing' or 'makes you y% better at damage' or worst of all 'you take z% less damage' because those kinds of talents suck. For holy you might want to go with something like 'increase chance to crit by % on dazed targets' and then let that synergize with inspiration and the smite thing.

I think they need to seriously reconsider redoing the trees from the ground up. With all the class talents I notice that I don't feel the same way about mixing and matching talents. Making new talents clearly has been gimped by having to work within the confines of the old 31 point trees. You just don't see any good synergy sprouting up between new talents and old ones.

Page 11 before I even noticed this. I was always wishing for prayer of renew. A lot of nifty spells and abilities, and the top shadow talents are dangerous.

See I totally disagree. Warriors shouldn't be able to DPS. I've always had that view. Warriors = tanks. Priests = healers.


I want better healing talents damnit :(.

I don’t like Mass Dispel at all, like decursive – which I’m sure has something to do with it - it just limits design. Debuffs in this game are almost meaningless, at Lucifron every single Priest, Mage, Druid and Paladin learnt how to dispel an entire raid of hostile debuffs in 10 seconds. The only way they can implement debuffs that actually matter is to make them of an unclassified type so you cannot dispel them at all.

There’s never any strategy or priority, it’s just slamming decursive – now you can demagic an entire party and dispel offensively in one spell. Though it will be hilarious watching priests one-shot themselves dispelling an area I’ve just loaded with Unstable Affliction in PvP, I’d rather see things like Dispel Magic getting a cast time, and the AoE decursive mashing encounters retroactively changed to more concentrated doom or crippling debuffs. I can dream can’t I?

Also: Misery seems to further indicate that Shadow Embrace is a debuff on the target like we suspected, rather than a buff on the Warlock like Tseric stated.

Edit: So it's more the debuff system we have than the spell itself, but the introduction of that spell basically means it's going to be this way forever.

I noticed people keep mentioning downranking but I thought that is going away in TBC? Or is that still just rumor?

Well with the advent of the new Warlock "LOL you dispelled me you die now" talent I'm sure we'll see raid bosses that require selective dispelling - or else the dispeller or the dispellee will take massive damage.

Hooray for more staring at healthbars.

They did that on Huhuran and (kind of)Grobbulus already. Wouldn't really be anything new :P

(Debuffs that have bad effects when removed, that is, mixing those with debuffs you DO have to remove would be a nightmare)

It'd be really cool if they made a boss that had debuffs that required dispelling, and those that required you to leave on at the same time... of the same type.

They could either have them timed separetely, or have one the result of another, similar to the poison thing in AQ that you have to wait with the "pre-debuff" on you before you can clense it, or the sleep poison in ZG, but have both phases actually be important. Something where you need to wait it out for x seconds before being able to dispell it would be great, but with both being of the same type, and with massive drawbacks if you dispelled it too early... especially if somehow they have the same name but a different icon, in that you can't make a mod to check it based on the name.

Anything that can foil decursive I'm all for.

Pretty unimpressed at first, but the more I think about it, the nicer it seems. Shadow Mend was pretty much the only thing that could make me spec Shadowform. Pain Suppression seems awesome. I just wish I could pick up all of the defensive or all of the (non-shadow) offensive talents in one spec.