By that logic you'd also be capable of standing "vaguely near a pillar" and thus capable of completely mitigating the Hunter's outgoing damage by, you know, playing ring around the pillar.

In short, your argument is full of circuitous logic.

I'll throw out some more stuff:

Mana Burn the Hunter to a relatively low state, and then focus on CCing or LoSing him. Come Tuesday (assuming that that is when 3.0.2 hits), that essentially robs him of any mana regeneration whatsoever, and puts him in a very, very sorry state. On top of that, he'll be doing 50% less damage for a fairly considerable amount of time afterwards (and possibly not have enough to keep a steady string of Vipers up).

You'd be focing him into Aspect of the Viper (-50% damage done, mana regened on hit), and Hunters have essentially no passive regen. Coupled with the extreme amount of mana consumption the class is saddled with, a few timely mana burns from your Priest and then some good pillar play essentially removes him from the fight, because his damage will be significantly reduced, and he'll be in much rougher shape than either of you for the rest of the fight.

If you really want to bone him, kill his pet if you can find the time.

You don't need to remain in los of the priest (regardless of what their second teammate is) to keep pressure up, just viper sting and run away to the best of your ability. It's not difficult to gain distance from a priest - it's not 2v1.

Don't be an fucking ass if you're not even going to try to make cogent counterarguments. You claim that "priests and mages can burst a hunter easily", and I counter by listing a massive array of tools (Silencing Shot, Scatter Shot, Feign Death, Disengage...and i haven't even mentioned Freezing Arrow). You throw out the Strawman of "disengage doesn't get you away"; I say all you have to do is be near a pillar while they're casting at you and disengage out of Line of Sight....and THIS is your counter? Hint: Priests and Mages have to stand still and cast to do real damage--and that's what we're talking about.

Oh---and one more thing: Frost Traps. Priests have no counter to movement impairing effects. Mages only have blink.

Would making PW:S and ice barrier absorb mana damage as well help balance this at all? The coefficient for how much normal damage a point of mana damage counts as might have to be experimented with, but this would seem one possible direction to take this, and make viper sting additionally require some actual damage to be done to the mage or priest to ensure it does anything.

...Possibly. It's a very good idea, though not without its issues. For example, would that essentially make Mana Burn 'twice as good' vs Power Word: Shield, similar to how Mana Burn is "twice as good" vs. Mana Shield?

If the absorb was, say, 2:1 ratio or so, than yes it would be useful. At the very least it forces a priest to re-shield every 15 seconds vs. a Viper Sting, still a non-trivial mana cost, especially when you factor in the lack of mana returns from Rapture (a hundred or two for a PW:S).

I would honestly prefer that all mana drains be removed, and hunters and priests no longer balanced around them, but that option would significantly mitigate the imbalance--though it makes non-frost mages still screwed (oh well). Or, perhaps Fade could provide invulnerability to mana drain effects for its duration?

I don't think the 2v2 combo of mage/priest is really the best example to claim Viper Sting is overpowered, since that's the absolute only pure mana based team that can't remove poisons. It's not at all surprising that Viper Sting is at its best against that setup. It really seems like you're ranting that Viper Sting is really good against your particular composition rather than anything else.

edit:

His point is that you don't seem to understand how the abilities you're complaining about work. You can't just Disengage to go LOS around a pillar unless someone is standing in your face.

This is silly. Priests remain one of the dominant classes in all brackets because they have an offensive threat (dispel, burn) and can heal while doing both of those things (renew, POM, Shield). You make it sound like mana burn is this terrible ability, when instead it is one of the defining features of a class that has seen immense success at all levels of arena play. Yes, if you get behind on healing as a priest, it is difficult to catch up - this isn't any different than other healers, since everyone is vulnerable to a lockout during these times (even druids in some circumstances). You will obviously never have the lasting output of a paladin or druid, but that is one of the biggest reasons priests play on teams that enable them to catch up easily and gain free time to burn during CC and such. Having an offensive ability that players fear so much they have to be ready to pillar hump at a moment's notice is extremely powerful even if you don't land it.


This is a legitimate peculiarity. The odd thing is that despite the fact viper is an excellent overall priest counter then and now, priests have still remained at the top and hunters at the bottom for over a year.

I'd argue that the days of priest dominance are long gone. Priests were excellent in 3s in one set up (PMR) and all the double healer variations, and of course are amazing in 5's - but 5's is mostly a dead bracket. Even so, in double healer set ups, disc priests don't really heal at all. If the disc priest is in a position where he has to heal, then you are doing pretty horribly.

The problem with priests are that they are a pretty terrible healer and pretty amazing support class. In teams with a lot of crowd control where they don't have to heal much, priests are fantastic, since they offer by far the most offensive utility of any healer. In teams where the priest actually has to heal, priests struggle. There is no succesful team at all where the priest has to actually heal significantly.

That's why paladin/priest is the core of most traditional 5 vs 5 teams. The paladin provides all the healing, the priest only dispells/mana burns, and helps the paladin cover for burst.

In 2s, the only really good (disc) priest combination is priest/mage. In 3s, PMR is mostly dead these days due to WLD dominance and priests only really show up in double healer set ups. In 5s, priests are doing pretty damn well.

Priests are not doing anywhere near as bad as shamans or paladins, but right now all healers are completely overshadowed by druids in every bracket except 5 vs 5. Priests just have the luck that they complement the druid weaknesses very well, so double healer outlast set ups tipically are druid/priest/x.

edit:
Another reason why priests have hugely fallen in popularity is that priests are completely vulnerable to melee rape trains. We have zero ability to shake off melees, and if you play a priest you almost require someone to peel the melees from you - tipically either a mage or a druid.

I don't disagree with any particular point about priests having slowly weakened due to a variety of factors, but PMR is alive and well at the top of the food chain, at least in Stormstrike.

I'm assuming in the 3.0 patch that all healers are going to take a hit due to the new DPS talents and abilities that seem to dramatically increase both sustained and burst damage for a lot of classes. With season 4 gear it is already perfectly possible to drop anyone in a kidney shot or other very small window of time with solid coordination; I don't see this changing. Also with Ret the way it currently is, I don't see how anyone could survive a cleave team with a Ret paladin + other melee on it.

The reason priests and paladins "work well together" in 5s is less about any sort of synergy and more about double defensive dispels. Hell, it's the only big reason. If you want to play with a priest/paladin on your 5v5 team, you need to bring another priest/palain or a warlock. Period. The only exception to this is pretty much that druid paladin shaman hunter warrior comp, which still baffles me when it hits #1 spots ever (honestly, how does the paladin do anything ever on that team?). Sitting in fear or poly until DR is... a disadvantage.

It varies by BG, but if you look at lan performance, WLD dominates. On live, with PvE gear on melees, the situation is a fair bit different, but if you look at numbers, PMR still doesn't compare to the druid based teams.

Keep in mind that PMR also has a few combinations that it just cannot beat ever - double healer warrior/hunter are incredibly rough. WLD is a horrible match up with undispellable fel armor.

Yeah, 3.0 is going to be the day of double DPS. I don't really think any team without a ret paladin can have serious success, but 3.0 is not really meant to be balanced, and Blizzard knows as much.

I am more concerned with balance at level 80, but trying to guess that based on short snapshots of people with vastly varying gear is kinda hard. Tipically though damage outpaces healing very quickly.

This is probably a question for the druid thread, but I see restokins being very popular with the addition of spellpower gear and swiftmend.

Yes, I've been getting more response from "http://elitistjerks.com/f38/t14753-druid_resto_pvp_thread/p56/#post934150" the Druid thread,
Just thought I'd ask around. Also, a lot of people are saying Restokin/Swiftmend is looking like the new resto druid arena build.

I actually suggested something similar in the beta forums a few days ago - I think that this would be a good way to partially protect mages/priests without having to give priests the ability to remove poison if they feel strongly about not wanting them to be able to. The issue with this, as you obviously recognized as well, is that pw:s/barrier would get eaten through so quickly if they were being eaten up from both mana drains and damage - so they wouldn't end up feeling like they are absorbing much of either unless you are not being attacked.

Of course your suggestion to adjust the coefficient for damage->drain conversion would definitely be an applicable solution for this. Another similar solution would be to make all mana drains deal some amount of damage, and require them to deal damage in order for mana to be drained. This would end up affecting priests/mages similarly, as you would obviously still use barrier/pw:s to prevent yourself from taking the spells damage (thus preventing the drain as well).

Elendril - This is not a problem that only mage/priest deals with, it is just as gamebreaking for other priest/x (and to a lesser extent mage/x) teams as well. If you cannot achieve a kill very quickly, which is difficult even if the priest is shadow against experienced opponents, you cannot win.

Amera - Priest representation is really not overwhelmingly high - for instance they are tied with shaman as the 6/7th most represented class in 2v2 above 2200 on US-Bloodlust. The reason priests have as much representation as they do is, as you said, obviously the result of their strong offense, which has been all but killed in wotlk with the poor scaling of mana burn and the extremely high mana cost of dispel. As it is on live, priests lack of sustainability is compensated for by their offensive power; in beta, this compensation is very weak by comparison. Also, while you have a point that hunters are less represented than priests, it seems very silly to me that hunters can have so many of their issues ignored based presumably on the sole fact that they can farm priests teams via viper sting. I imagine hunters would support a nerf to viper sting as well if it meant that their other problems were properly addressed :p

Interesting that you post this yesterday, the very same day I was going to post a similar comment to focus attention on the absolute requirement for your teammates being able to peel from you, in fact pretty much your entire team being able to do so helps immeasurably (one of the reasons WMP worked for a while). I havn't admittedly played much for an entire season season when dual melee gained its dominance, however I played quite a few matches to a high of 2100 and believe it to be much the same these days - albeit worse against teams with a warlock.

It seems a little difficult to swallow that due to disc's horrible healing ability you need the entire team set up to peel/cc for you, and your 'role' is essentially to spam dispel for half the match and mana burn to actually contribute to the match yourself - two abilities nerfed in LK. Also, the vulnerability when under pressure coupled with an opponent's offensive dispel is ridiculous - shield, prom, renew, inner fire, fort & shadow prot all offer mitigation just fall off and at that point you're the worst AC class in the game with the worst healing with some severe vulnerabilities to Hunters, Melee & Shaman (I'm a little unsure about DKs right now but I assume their anti-caster capabilities don't make things much fun either!).

I am quite sure for at least season 1 paladins will be the dominant healer. Plate armor is huge given the melee scaling, and they are now very very hard to lockdown.

The ability to assist and throw utility out when not under pressure to heal is extremly useful and important in a metagame where the damage doesn't massively overscale healing, but when all healers are going to have to spam heal like crazy just to keep people alive, the ability to contribute to the offensive play doesn't mean nearly as much.

If I implied that mana burn was a terrible ability, that wasn't my intention. What I meant was that mana burn was an ability that required setup, and particularly, the cooperation of your teammates. If you end up fighting a 1v1 in an arena, mana burn will be of no use to you because you have virtually no ability to get someone to eat one. In other words, it's a powerful ability that requires a lot of effort to use successfully. The fact that eating mana burns was (as of 2.4; I haven't tried in 3.0) really, really bad contributed a great deal to its deterrent effect. Priests ARE a terrible class if you can't seize and maintain initiative, and mana burn was one of our main tools for accomplishing this effect. If you reduce the effectiveness of mana burn, aggressive strategies will become less risky against priests.

A simple way they could fix the issues with dispels, is by making the randomness much less random.


Current: You go to dispel something with 30% resist, you can fail 5 times. It's random chance.

Possible change: Instead of it being a random check, they could simply alter it so that it's a talent that is 30% on first cast, and then the protection "loses a charge" and it's then 15%, and finally on the third time it's got 0% resist chance. This would remove a lot of the frustration I had as a priest spamming dispels on someone and not catching ANYTHING.

I really think this is the kind of system they're going to have to develop if they want to "fix it".

An easier solution would be to just decide if they want stuff to be dispelable or not. If so, then there doesn't need to be an RNG check. If they want to compromise, they could make certain abilities last for a smaller duration but immune to dispels.

Having it be completely black and white leads to massive problems and imbalances with having a particular class/spec in an arena. For example, a mutilate rogue against a druid. There are several others where they need "some" sort of dispel protection. I just don't think black and white solves it, they need a level of grey in there to have the class keep it's identity even against teams that are straight counters.

Well, another alternative would be "lengthens duration after dispelled" as part of the talent. For example: you dispel freedom, and it lasts 3 seconds after that or until it's duration expires, whichever is shorter. It would eliminate the RNG resists and give a predictable buffer to certain things. They would need to flag a spell as "dispelled" so you wouldn't waste mana trying to dispel something that was going away in another second or two, which might be a big coding project.

I think realistically you are much more likely for them to go black-and-white, a la fel armor/frost armor because it is probably the easiest thing to do at the coding level. But without a lot of thought put into that, yeah, you could end up with some really imbalanced situations. Ideally I think dispels are supposed to be another nice bonus of bringing someone along, not a requirement. But obviously in TBC arena that wasn't the case at all.

Well, the trouble with that is that certain abilities--especially DS/block, if they last even 3 seconds after you dispel it, you are already hosed. I had an idea regarding some kind of "dispel value" system where a buff or debuff would be assigned a value based on its dispel resistance and the dispel roll would with a high enough roll remove the effect, or with a lower roll reduce the dispel value remaining on the buff, making it more vulnerable to a followup dispel. But the numbers would require a lot of adjusting to get them to work reasonably, so I'm not sure it's not more convenient to just add a cutoff.