With it's high mana cost to us, it is very often not worth using because the our opponent has a way to regain the mana that we have drained (innervate, divine plea, tide - which is obviously the weakest of the 3), while we still do not have the same ability to regain the mana required to mana burn.
It's not like those abilities don't have cooldowns though. Even if you can drain someone 3 times early in the match to force their CD's, you're up on them. If you're unfortunate and can't get a dispel on them, a few more drains will set you up.
It's not like those abilities don't have cooldowns though. Even if you can drain someone 3 times early in the match to force their CD's, you're up on them. If you're unfortunate and can't get a dispel on them, a few more drains will set you up.
On live, yes. However this is not the case in beta. I tested (in duels) against a friend of mine on a balance druid and holy paladin - I spammed mana burn from us both starting at full mana, and by the time they were out of mana I had barely enough mana left to cast 1 more mana burn. They were out of the 5sr, but neither divine plea nor innervate were active. I was also shadow at the time, so my mana burns were 3 second casts. This is still indicative of a serious problem with how the spell has scaled.
Looking at the numbers for mana burn, it went up 50% in effectiveness (1000->1500), while mana pools have about doubled (10k->20k). But while in that respect it is certainly less imposing, I don't see how it has been nerfed into "uselessness." If you are allowed to cast for a few seconds you can still flip any close mana match on its head.
The only odd thing is that Viper sting roughly doubled in effect (1400-3000) while drain mana only went up about 20% (200-240/tick), so they have apparently intentionally chosen not to scale all drain effects the same.
Viper is being nerfed by the dispell change that takes off a 5 stack of scorpid poison in one cast. While it does make it more brutal for priests, life is easier on shamans and paladins with the change. Presumably druids will continue going straight to bear form and it will have no effect.
Viper is being nerfed by the dispell change that takes off a 5 stack of scorpid poison in one cast. While it does make it more brutal for priests, life is easier on shamans and paladins with the change. Presumably druids will continue going straight to bear form and it will have no effect.
Not necessarily (Druids excepted). Drains will have to be set up far more efficiently though. Druid / Hunter can still cyclone one and drain the other character. Having a base Viper sting of around 3000 will matter a great deal. Hunters will probably be the only realistically viable drain option if they leave it as is.
Priests are not being given tools to improve their mana management, especially not in pvp. With dispel costing 100% more than it does on live and mana burn having scaled to worthlessness even given the extremely small mana pools that opponents in the premade pvp gear have, we're in as poor a situation as ever in regards to sustainability. We've always lacked sustainability, but in return we were given spells that gave us power over our opponents; the fear of being feared and mana burned gave us a lot of control over positioning. Now that mana burn no longer functions as a way to bring our opponents with superior regen down to our own level of inefficiency (or below it), we're just inefficient and the utility that we gain in return for our lack of efficiency is very weak.
What do you consider talents like Rapture and Dispersion to be then? You're mostly arguing that priest mana regen and spell cost haven't been scaled well, which is a valid point. But given Blizzard's timeline of continuing scaling until the start of Season Five, not WotLK launch, it's a bit early to judge the end results.
At least by adding mana regen talents and skills, they've made it easier to tweak.
Viper is being nerfed by the dispell change that takes off a 5 stack of scorpid poison in one cast. While it does make it more brutal for priests, life is easier on shamans and paladins with the change. Presumably druids will continue going straight to bear form and it will have no effect.
So in other words---Viper Sting continues to be the ultimate "I Win" button vs. Priests and Mages?
In 2v2--expect to see more Hunters and for Priests to fall off the end of the world...and that's even before factoring in the insane inbalance of Viper vs Priests.
Double Dps teams could end up quite interesting though. I think that teams with Prot warriors (or at least warriors with 23 points in Prot for Gag Order and Concussion Blow) will become quite viable. Mage/War, Warlock/Warrior, etc.
Edit:
What do you consider talents like Rapture and Dispersion to be then? You're mostly arguing that priest mana regen and spell cost haven't been scaled well, which is a valid point. But given Blizzard's timeline of continuing scaling until the start of Season Five, not WotLK launch, it's a bit early to judge the end results.
Rapture is NOT a viable mana return in PvP. In practice, it will work out to being about a 15-20% discount on fully effective healing spells (note the 'fully effective' part). Unless they completely redesign Rapture so that the coefficient of mana return changes depending on what spell you cast (right now it's a static number based on level), Rapture will only come close to returning 2.5% of your max mana on Penance and Greater Heal (and then only if you have a lot of spellpower or get a crit).
In 2v2--expect to see more Hunters and for Priests to fall off the end of the world...and that's even before factoring in the insane inbalance of Viper vs Priests.
Yeh I'm not leveling my priest because of Viper Sting. It is incredibly frustrating in arena and even Battlegrounds (where almost all hunters have learned to use it) to have one tick tick tick and being helpless. Its just plain game breaking to me, given you have no way to avoid it (instant cast) or remove it.
Yeh I'm not leveling my priest because of Viper Sting. It is incredibly frustrating in arena and even Battlegrounds (where almost all hunters have learned to use it) to have one tick tick tick and being helpless. Its just plain game breaking to me, given you have no way to avoid it (instant cast) or remove it.
As a Mage, I feel this pain...I have to blow an Ice Block specifically to get rid of this, which means I have to endure stuns and other nonsense until the hunter decides to use it, or be prey with no mana. I imagine Paladins have a similar concern with their bubbles. I actually find facing Hunter's to be a nice challenge most of the time, because of the almost total rethink of strategy...but then Viper Sting gets pulled out, I'm oom, and that's game. In arena, it's 'fun' to have your healing partner oom...and right when the fight starts is as good as any! Sometimes I take heart at their balancing, and others I just shake my head and ask why there seem to be conflicting designers. This is kinda the second category.
I imagine Paladins have a similar concern with their bubbles.
Nah, we just cleanse. Or try to cleanse, hoping: 1) we'll actually hit Viper Sting, instead of Scorpid Poison stacks, and 2) the cleanse on Viper Sting won't resist.
Nah, we just cleanse. Or try to cleanse, hoping: 1) we'll actually hit Viper Sting, instead of Scorpid Poison stacks, and 2) the cleanse on Viper Sting won't resist.
Which brings me to problem #2! Besides poisons, dispels are really getting out of hand... I've been doing a lot of 2v2 on beta in the last few days and haven't whined this much about dispel in a long time. I remember a specific situation against a ret paladin where I dispelled 4 times and failed to remove his Blessing of Freedom, then he stunned my partner and I wasn't able to remove his HoJ with 2 dispels, then he bubbled and guess what? Mass Dispel fails, 4k mana down the drain and nothing accomplished.
They've removed mace stuns, they've changed stun/fear resist talents to duration reduction, dispel really needs to be next in line if they want to reduce randomness.
Which brings me to problem #2! Besides poisons, dispels are really getting out of hand... I've been doing a lot of 2v2 on beta in the last few days and haven't whined this much about dispel in a long time. I remember a specific situation against a ret paladin where I dispelled 4 times and failed to remove his Blessing of Freedom, then he stunned my partner and I wasn't able to remove his HoJ with 2 dispels, then he bubbled and guess what? Mass Dispel fails, 4k mana down the drain and nothing accomplished.
They've removed mace stuns, they've changed stun/fear resist talents to duration reduction, dispel really needs to be next in line if they want to reduce randomness.
I'm waffly on this aspect. In one regard, a dispel that always works can overpower certain classes quickly and shut down a lot of what they bring to a fight. On the other, no dispelling lets those classes run rampant with no counter. I think the 'your chance to be dispelled reduced by X%' talents are a step in the right direction, but combined with a...high[?]...base change to your base resist chance, this can essentially shut down dispels altogether...which as I just said is bad. I really think the mechanic needs some more testing and streamlining so that the dispel-resist mechanic and talents make it less mana efficient to cleanse, but don't kill it outright [like in your example].
They need to overhaul the whole system, dispel resist talents are way too random and should be rethought. If this means raising the mana cost of dispel itself to compensate I'm ok with that.
The number of dispellable effects also needs to be reduced by a large amount, stuff like improved scorch, winter's chill, all the trash 30-60 minutes buffs that people just use for dispel fodder need to be made undispellable, so that when I do dispel, I'm actually removing stff that matters. They started with frost armor/fel armor but they really need to go the whole way.
I'd like dispel to be reliable, something that works 100%, not a lottery, even if the spell itself and all dispellable effects have to be rebalanced because of it.
I can get behind this if the cost of dispelling is raised to compensate. Still, I can understand why the devs would be wary to completely overhaul the mecha...ah, who am I kidding, they do drastic rebalancing all the time. Still, since we're talking about it, what about a system that prioritizes buffs? Taking a page from Dungeons & Dragons, a dispel that tries/targets the strongest buff in the chain first. Obviously this would do the same for debuffs, trying to remove the 'most threathening' first. Just as an example, a priest has an ally who's feared by Psychic Scream and has a movement impairment debuff...which one do you think he's trying to target? An enemy has a magic shield active and a food buff...you really think he's trying dispel well-fed? It wouldn't be too hard to structure, and could have three to five threat levels, with minor things at the bottom and the major, balance tossing buffs at the top.
This could then be handled one of two ways:
1) The higher costed dispel removes a random effect from the highest list available...so say if they have Fortitude, a shield, and a high spell damage buff active, it randomly picks one and poofs it, ignoring lower threat effects. One of the top ones goes. If there's only one there, it goes.
2) More like classic D&D, where the current resist mechanics are active, so it goes down the list in order, checking things from the highest tier first and then going randomly until it runs out of things in that tier or dispells one. This gives the dispeller a much better chance of dispelling something meaningful while still letting resist mechanics have an effect. Assuming a series of resists, it moves down to the next tier. If the RNG is being Murphey-esque and everything resists, it randomly picks one from the lowest threat and kicks it, letting the dispeller try again with a better chance at high-tier.*
*this assumes resists no higher than and likely around 50%, since multiple buffs at (>_)66% resist can kick the resist from meaningful buffs rather often. Heck, even try flipping a coin and you can get tails a lot, but it's better than nothing and 30-50% 'feels' about right if resist mechanics will be active at all.
Yeh I'm not leveling my priest because of Viper Sting. It is incredibly frustrating in arena and even Battlegrounds (where almost all hunters have learned to use it) to have one tick tick tick and being helpless. Its just plain game breaking to me, given you have no way to avoid it (instant cast) or remove it.
It just seems so strange to me that the drain that is twice as effective as all the others is the one that can be cast from the longest distance, with the shortest cast time, and for the least amount of mana (relative to the casters mana pool). It's far too gamebreaking for priests and mages to justify it being so easy to apply.
Viper sting is fine in the current meta-game where it is the only real hunter selling point. When they buff hunter damage/mobility, having an amazingly powerful insta-cast drain is way too strong though.
If you are a priest facing a hunter team, you have ~1.5 minutes to win or so before you have no mana.
Hunter seems to lack something PVP-wise, which can be seen with their lack of prevalence in top arena teams. At least they get to counter some classes. It is the right design choice ? not in my opinion. But in the rock-paper-scissors world, hunter *should* be the counter class to ranged clothies. (ranged physical damage) Maybe it should be more on the side of damage/anti-CC... than on the side of draining, it would also up their general performance against other classes.
Viper sting is fine in the current meta-game where it is the only real hunter selling point. When they buff hunter damage/mobility, having an amazingly powerful insta-cast drain is way too strong though.
If you are a priest facing a hunter team, you have ~1.5 minutes to win or so before you have no mana.
It would be more advantageous to everyone if they just nerfed viper sting and stopped balancing hunters around it. It's too gamebreaking against priests and mages, and by having such a strong utility spell as this is preventing hunters from receiving aid in the places they need it.
It's not like those abilities don't have cooldowns though. Even if you can drain someone 3 times early in the match to force their CD's, you're up on them. If you're unfortunate and can't get a dispel on them, a few more drains will set you up.
You're missing something important here. If you've played a healer before in arena you understand that having to play catch-up is fatal. As long as a paladin can cover needed heals primarily with FoL and a druid can cover needed heals primarily through HoTs, etc., they are relatively safe and have functionally infinite mana, but the moment they need to come out and spam big heals, they're in immense danger of being locked out, CCed, or trained on, or indeed--mana burned.
The problem with mana burn is that it has a relatively long cast time and is easily LOSed, and that during attempts to mana burn the priest is not doing things that prevent their partners from losing health. Often, attempts to mana burn will result in the priest having to come back and play catch-up, risking lockout, burning through mana like crazy. Priests don't even have the luxury of infinite-mana-when-not-spamming, since their big "safe" heal is PW:S--renew and PoM lacking the raw potency of triple lifeblooms and rejuvenation.
Essentially, mana burn already provides no advantage in live unless you (or more accurately, your teammates, since the only means priests have of setting up their own burns is to fear and hope it doesn't run the target to the opposite side of a pillar) can force the target to stand there and eat your mana burns and any other healers on your team are able to keep everyone in good health. If its effectiveness dropped in Wrath, the benefit probably won't be worth the risk and effort involved.
Q: When are you going to make omen of clarity non-dispellable?
A: We're not entirely happy with the dispel system right now. There's the whole strategy of junk buffs. We changed a lot to see how things would work out and the balance would stand. If we say omen cant' be dispelled, then we have to look at what else can't be dispelled.
It would be more advantageous to everyone if they just nerfed viper sting and stopped balancing hunters around it. It's too gamebreaking against priests and mages, and by having such a strong utility spell as this is preventing hunters from receiving aid in the places they need it.
For the love of.... It's not by any means game breaking. I've lost to many priests and mages. It's like any other setup, you may have to move out of your comfort zone strategy. If you play defensively and wait for burst opportunities, you will be drained. Here's the solution, force your opponents hand and win in the first 2 minutes. Both mages and priests have great control and burst, use them.
Originally Posted by missiletoad
I get enjoyment out of constructing buildings out of my fries and demolishing them with my chicken nugget army as I make monster noises. But you people. You people are FREAKS.
For the love of.... It's not by any means game breaking. I've lost to many priests and mages. It's like any other setup, you may have to move out of your comfort zone strategy. If you play defensively and wait for burst opportunities, you will be drained. Here's the solution, force your opponents hand and win in the first 2 minutes. Both mages and priests have great control and burst, use them.
This is more applicable to mages than to priests, who most often run 2dps comps in 2s. On my priest I have played as both disc and shadow against hunter/healer teams - winning via gibbing someone is essentially impossible (barring dramatic rng) against experienced players, even as shadow. I am not trying to sound condescending at all, but if you are often losing to priest teams (not sure what you are running, i'll assuming druid/hunter?) - then you and your partner just need to refine your strategy.
For the love of.... It's not by any means game breaking. I've lost to many priests and mages. It's like any other setup, you may have to move out of your comfort zone strategy. If you play defensively and wait for burst opportunities, you will be drained. Here's the solution, force your opponents hand and win in the first 2 minutes. Both mages and priests have great control and burst, use them.
Are you fucking kidding me?
I play 2v2 as Disc/Mage...and a Hunter/Healer team is literally impossible to beat if they're at all competent. That's right: Z E R O C H A N C E. Hunters already have so many tools to prevent burst from Casters (Scatter, Silence, Feign Death, and especially spell pushback from pets and shots) that what you just proposed is already doomed to fail.
Throw in deterance affecting spells, and disengaging around a pillar or out of range...and...there is basically no chance you can lose. If you lose to mages and priests (that were NOT paired with rogues), your opinion on this topic is worthless.
There has been only one spell in the history of warcraft that is as unbalanced vs. one or two classes and trivial vs every other class: Will of the Forsaken.
And in terms of the 'meta-game': if you balance a game by rock-paper-scissors as 100% wins, your game will not be balanced. That is the situation we are looking at for Wrath.
I've played many games as disc/mage in beta as well, all it takes to make the game last longer than 2 minutes is simply running around a pillar, not exactly a complex strategy.
That is the situation we are looking at for Wrath.
The real issue is that pvp has received no balancing whatsoever in beta. Their approach has always been to wait and see how it plays out and then tweak from there. We're going to have to live with it being like this until at least patch 3.1.
I play 2v2 as Disc/Mage...and a Hunter/Healer team is literally impossible to beat if they're at all competent. That's right: Z E R O C H A N C E. Hunters already have so many tools to prevent burst from Casters (Scatter, Silence, Feign Death, and especially spell pushback from pets and shots) that what you just proposed is already doomed to fail.
Throw in deterance affecting spells, and disengaging around a pillar or out of range...and...there is basically no chance you can lose. If you lose to mages and priests (that were NOT paired with rogues), your opinion on this topic is worthless.
1.) Deterrence no longer affects spells.
2.) Disengage requires a target within 10 yards of the Hunter (aka, Frost Nova range!), it cannot be used otherwise.
3.) Disengage moves you 12-13 yards. Hardly "out of range" of anyone, even untalented, if you remember that the max use range on Disengage is 10 yards. It also takes about 1.5 seconds to land after using it.
4.) You are talking out of your ass about a class you do not play and I'm just using your points to prove it.
Done.
How can you help?
I can shoot things and then make my pet move toward them.
2.) Disengage requires a target within 10 yards of the Hunter (aka, Frost Nova range!), it cannot be used otherwise.
3.) Disengage moves you 12-13 yards. Hardly "out of range" of anyone, even untalented, if you remember that the max use range on Disengage is 10 yards. It also takes about 1.5 seconds to land after using it.
4.) You are talking out of your ass about a class you do not play and I'm just using your points to prove it.
Done.
1.) I forgot they removed that part of deterrence.
2 and 3 are handled together): it takes very little to be NEXT TO A PILLAR and jump back out of line of sight. While fighting classes like mages and priests that have to stand there and cast long-casting-time spells (Frostbolt, Smite or Mind Flay) to do real damage that have ZERO pushback protection, even getting out of line of sight for 1 spell means the difference between getting a successful burst and failing to generate any pressure.
Furthermore, the only effective way for a priest or mage to even attack a hunter is NOT to have stand-off fights from range, but be close range instead. You won't be rooted by frost nova 100%, simply stand vaguely near a pillar!
10/05/08, 11:53 PM
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