Vihermaali

Depends on how you define exciting, powerful and fun. At least I know I will have fun with Guardian Spirit, diviny hymn and new Lightwell. Guardian spirit for at I'm confident in my own abilities to put it into good use. It's the only ability in game that says "Hah! I saved your ass!". Lightwell for learning how to use it (me myself and me bashing it into guildies faces). Divine hymn apparently can incapacitate up to 10 non-mechanical mobs/players within 15y for 20 seconds. God knows how many M'uru wipes could have been prevented with divine hymn. Not to mention pvp applications. I'm not really debating about what is fun and not for YOU, but at least I got new and exiting abilities in WotLK.

 

grayrest

Every report I've heard since the BoSanc change is that they have no mana problems and I've also heard that warriors aren't having problems generating rage from attacks and aren't going rage starved when they outgear the content, so while this is true it may not be significant given the class changes.

 

Lambi

What annoys me the most is that we were perfectly fine from a numbers POV before the nerfs we got to so many talents. However I think it's stupid if you guys start emoing out now instead of posting suggestions en masse. I'm flooding the EU beta forums with suggestions at the moment, because it feels like the deadline for changes pre release is creeping very close.

Like what many others have already stated I think they should bake in some way of pumping threat through shields, either by adding a PvE flavour to reflective shield or by adding some absorb-favouring talent in the tanking specs like arcane mages have.

To adress the whole "if the tank takes heavy hits he'll get rage and if he doesn't you don't need to shield", what about the fights where you have everyone spreading out and adds pumping in from all sides? It's great to preemptively shield then, so you can do many tasks at the same time, the same thing goes for ProM, what the hell did they do to that talent? M'uru without a targetaggro ProM will be hell for me atleast, I can see the void spawns running for me 5 tries in a row because I've got it built in by now.

 

Chirality

The Prayer of Mending threat has been odd from the beginning--I remember playing my priest very early in BC, pre-ProM nerf, pre-Thunderclap buff, chain-casting prayer of mending on green-geared Warriors in Shattered Halls just so that they could hold agro.

I'm of the opinion that the Prayer of Mending threat was related to technological problems with their code--it counts as the person-being-healed's spell for the purposes of not only threat, but meters (Battlegrounds meters, not just Recount, etc) and (had it been able to crit) spell crit, as well. (Note: I base the 'spell crit' claim on experience with Lifebloom's final bloom effect, a similar mechanic)

I've seen no evidence to suggest that they care that much either way about who gets the threat, and that rather they just improved their code such that limitations were removed--and let us not kid ourselves, there are a number of mechanics in WoW that are bizarre only because of technological limitations (Grounding Totem and Spell Reflect eating multiple simultaneous spells, for example) that Blizzard is trying to correct.

 

Supermerkicus

TBC at least introduced PoM, which was extremely innovative, and we got Shadowfiend which is a really cool take on evocate, but it's also plagued with a lot of problems stemming from it's design.

Mass Dispel, unfortunately, is just a glorified counter to invulns in the Arena, which is something the game needed - the other uses of the spell are few and far between.

The coolest thing Priests had in WoTLK was Mark of Divinity, which was scrapped, and everything else is pretty boring compared to some of the exciting things my other characters are getting.

Many things about this game started to make sense when I realized that 'Blizzard' isn't just a 'company', but run by teams of people, who happen to be human.

Once you factor in the human element, things start to make a lot more sense, and there's an undeniable amount of bias in the development team - the notion of "omg they hate Priests" is completely absurd, but it's also rather obvious which classes the development team is 'interested' in and which classes they simply test with a premade and call it done.

There's really no other way to explain stuff like the refusal to remove the Inner Fire charges - it's a lot like trying to explain the universe without bringing in extra dimensions, when suddenly equations and things start to click together.

Furthermore, I think there's a significant amount of arrogance and bitterness involved - look at all the whining they see on the forums and compare that to your own experiences doing customer service for any kind of company. I'd love to be completely wrong about this, but you just don't have to look very hard to find evidence to support it.

 

Dekkar

From the perspective of someone (me) who has both a priest and a paladin tank:

1. If you're on progression content, and have to make the choice between Sanctuary and Kings, you will be choosing Kings. The incoming damage, even with constant shields proccing and PW:S every 15 seconds will be more than enough to restore mana. Prayer of Mending should also restore mana via Spiritual Attunement with the new mechanics as it no longer counts as a heal cast by the target healed. On progression fights, incoming damage will overpower any shields enough to keep a nearly full mana bar. If it's not, then the damage incoming must be low enough to be able to hot-swap Sanctuary in over Kings during the fight with a free GCD if mana is a problem.

2. If you're on farm content or content you outgear, you will be buffing yourself with Blessing of Sanctuary. In your example, that's what he should have been using from the start. If he was getting no mana back, it means he wasn't taking ANY damage! Warriors and Bears should be fine for rage, since warriors have a talent to generate rage on block/parry/dodge and they already generate it by damage, and bears do enough damage to generate sufficient rage (hence the reason why they are currently the best for secondary aggro). Death Knights have no such issues, and in fact are currently more susceptible to spike damage due to a high avoidance and low HP without a block mechanic. Thus, DK tanks will benefit the most from your DA and PW:S, assuming DK tanks are not reworked. The combined shields from the priest and PoM will negate a portion of that giant spike hit that gets through every so often, softening the blow to reasonable levels (and maybe they won't get utterly destroyed on Maexxna).

3. In a 25-man raid scenario, chances are as a prot paladin you will have access to BOTH Sanctuary and Kings. No mana issue exists.

I'm very surprised you haven't found additional uses for Mass Dispel that are common. While raiding, I find myself casting this often. There are quite a few mobs that have AoE magic buffs or debuffs that need to be dispelled (BT trash and Sunwell trash especially), and several bosses where it finds regular use (ROS Soul Drain with careful positioning, Felmyst, Zul'jin). Also it can remove unique debuffs such as Banish cast by mobs onto players.

 

Chirality

Mass Dispel is a solid dispel effect even in Arena. It really doesn't cost much more than twice a single dispel--so if you can hit four targets it's worth the cast. It's extremely valuable in Alterac Valley, where you can dispel a huge number of things at once, and valuable anytime you see a Mage Frost nova two-three people at the same time.

 

KalistraMerged

Is the priest class dead? No, I really don't think that at all. However I do see a significant shift away from it in WotLK. based on a number of priests i know, about half are seriously considering changing class, 25% are definately changing. Not good number. Ok some of those are to the DK (not a shock, its new) but some shadowpriests I know are going away as they feel they are loosing their raid synergy, and some of the helaers are going druid, or ditching healing totally.

However if you look at other classes you see exactly the same. Time will tell.

@Havok, I was thinking more this build for deep disc

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...00000000000000

 

Lambi

Please explain to me why you're not taking 2/2 imp DS? :o

 

Kakitajamie

It doesn't stack with Focus Magic, Flametongue Totem, Totem of Wrath, Demonic Pact.

Granted only Flametongue is guaranteed but flametongue alone is worth 144 spell power which would require 2400 spirit to equal. Totem of Wrath is 280 sp, see where I'm going.

 

gia

Some fresh news:

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Upcoming Priest racial changes

I wasn't really expecting this. It certainly puts a wrench in my pvp specs with only 2-5 points in holy.

 

• constantius

Huge, lovely change. I'm going to love using Symbol of Hope and Desperate Prayer, while still having Devouring Plague. Awesome buff for almost all priest races (except Dranei, who are no longer delicate special flowers with their mana return racial :p ).

Of the old racials, the following are being retired (of the 12 present/former):
- Feedback
- Touch of Weakness
- Chastise
- Shadowguard
- Hex of Weakness
- Starshards
- Consume Magic
- Elune's Grace

and the following are now baseline/talented:
- Desperate Prayer
- Devouring Plague
- Fear Ward
- Symbol of Hope

I don't think NEs will complain too much. They lose two semi-bad racials, and gain 3 amazing ones.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

◊ Lord BEEF

That's a lot of new abilities, especially for Pvp.

edit: I'm dumb. The old racials are being retired.

 

Vihermaali

I guess I can handle losing Hex of Weakness & Shadowguard!

Holy nova as 11p talent seems to be taken care of. I'm still kinda confused about Holy Nova's purpose. Too high manacost compared to amount of damage and healing done, even with the new glyph. If threat should be avoided, using new fade does the job just as well.

But thank god I chose troll, berserking fits priest toolkit really well.

 

Shatter Combo w/ Fries

Poor feedback I always thought one day you would blossom into a beautiful flower, but it seems you were born stupid, lived a stupid life, and will die just as stupid.

Goodbye, Feedback.

9/15/08

NEVER FORGET.

PvP wise, I am still flirting with the idea of re-rolling dwarf (from human) even with chastise leaving the game. Stoneform keeps looking better and better: rogue popularity is obviously not going anywhere, if anything mutilate will become more popular than now, and although we can cure deathknight diseases, it's still just that added touch of a panic button. Not to mention Stoneform+DP is, well, twice as good as just DP versus rogues.
Can another trinket slot overcome stoneform?

 

• constantius

I've actually had great luck using Holy Nova as a poor man's Arcane Explosion on Beta. Pull 4-6 mobs with SW:P (and a pre-pull PW:S), then Holy Nova and use GCDs on Surge of Light on a single target among the pack to get it dead faster than the rest. I found that if I got a mob dead fast enough, Spirit Tap was enough to keep me going with Holy Nova spam to get the rest dead, and then Spirit Tap from the final mob gets me back to full mana before the next pull. It's significantly faster than pulling one at a time, although you have to be careful not to overpull elites or mobs with heavy physical damage, interrupts, or stuns.

It's not supposed to be Arcane Explosion. It's a hybrid weird spell. Just accept that it's not designed well for raids, and leave it at that.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

• constantius

Complete side tangent ...

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> [Feedback] Cloth Drops from Naxxramas (10/25)

Yes, that is a blue, fixing our itemization. I'm doing a happy dance right now.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Alexanderr

Well I for one will be sorry to see Starshards go, I loved it so. Other then that, this certainly is a very interesting change indeed and I look forward to seeing how it pans out.

Anyway, if I may digress a little:

In the past I have always noticed a small delay (about 0.2/0.3 seconds) between the procing of Holy Concentration and the gaining of the Clearcasting buff. When chain-casting, back to back using Quartz, it's not uncommon for me to have cast a Gheal that procs Holy Concentration and start to cast a new Gheal a fraction of a second before the Clearcasting buff appears. Up until now this has never posed a problem as the Clearcasting buff has always been consumed and the cast has been free as intended.

However this has raised an Issue with Improved Holy Concentration and its secondary effect of reducing the cast time of your next spell:

While chain-casting Gheal on the PTR, I noticed the same issue as above, a Gheal would proc Improved Holy Concentration however I would have already started casting the next Gheal a fraction of a second before the buff gain and thus no haste is applied. This results in no decreased cast time to the Gheal in progress and if this spell is allowed to complete, then the Clearcasting and Improved Holy Concentration buffs are consumed. In order to gain the benefit of the decreased cast time of Improved Holy Concentration I found I had to quite often cancel the Gheal that was currently casting and start a new one. I know this isn't a game breaking thing but it is bloody annoying, for me at least anyway.

I'd very much like to know if anyone else is experiencing this issue? Is it simply my slow computer causing issues?

Alex

 

• constantius

It's a known problem, and one that so far has not been addressed by Blizzard. Create a thread on your Beta forums and bump the issue. It'll be interesting to see how they decide to try to fix it, since it really is a latency issue.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Ana

My primary issues with DA and the bubble mechanic in general is that it works in direct opposition to the changes they are trying to make for all tanks. One of the biggest things they've attempted to do is to increase tank dps. Then they give priests a "healing" ability that deprives them of resources. Whether they are able to still muster enough rage/mana to create the required threat levels is irrelevant. They have created a "healing" ability that actually interferes with the healed persons ability to do their job and manage their own resources. And to add to the problem it actually gets worse as your gear improves! Tanks getting new gear will be taking less damage, shields from priests with upgraded gear will be even larger, and dps with new gear will be pushing out higher numbers in shorter amounts of time. Why would we want a mechanic that reduces someone else's resources and gets worse with progression? That is just a design flaw no matter how you try to overcome it through other means.

If they would stop being so stubborn and/or short sighted for 90 seconds and realize that it's just a bad mechanic they could pull out DS and use that 21 point spot to create a talent that fixes the problem with bubbles and rage. Right now DS and iDS are easily replaceable and stuck in the middle of a tree that values spirit less and less with each talent iteration. They should just fold DS and iDS into Fort and iFort and use that spot to actually help disc overcome a pretty significant issue.

 

Ellyh

Get the server to roll the calculation when the spell cast starts and inform the client of the fact. Add some check logic that the previous spell actually cast before applying it to prevent abuse.

 

PiousFlea

The problem is that heals, almost like fireballs, seem to take a non-trivial time to land. After all, you can successfully cast a heal on a player and the player can die before the heal lands. However, there's a one-deep spellcasting pseudoqueue to decrease the effective lag on your spells. So you finish casting the heal at 0.0 seconds, you start casting a new heal (already queued up) at 0.0 seconds, then at 0.05 seconds your heal actually lands, the server rolls for Holy Concentration, and you gain your haste buff. Oops, too late.

It's a similar problem to how DPS caster talents proc well into the cast-time of your next nuke. Of course, most nukes move much slower than a heal and have an obvious flight time. My suspicion is that all "instant" effects such as heals, dispels, DoTs, and instant nukes take exactly one frame to land. So if the server runs at 20FPS then it's a 50 msec time lag. 50ms is plenty of time for other stuff to happen, and when mashing a button you effectively start your next spellcast instantly.

The only real fix would be for the server to apply spell haste in real time. ie, as you gain spellhaste buffs your castbar moves faster, as you lose spellhaste your castbar moves slower. (mid-cast)

Of course this is unlikely to happen. Most likely Blizz will say "hey, you get haste for 20 sec, you can live with the first 2.5sec not being hasted". TBH, that's pretty much true.

 

Bendyr

Yeah, if you're going to have shammies in your raid, then IDS is a waste of 2 points entirely. See:
World of Warcraft (English) Forums -> Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking

 

Supermerkicus

Yeah Stoneform is nuts for Arena play and PVP. Dwarves were even more ridiculous back with the old Fear Ward.

 

Lanlaorn

I wouldn't mind sharing Symbol of Hope, I dearly love it as it is, and have synergy from having multiple Holy Priests in a group is really fun (was raiding with 3 Holy Priests per raid for a while lol - all Draenei!)

What I am sad about though is that they nerfed the shit out of it when they did this. I thought maybe it was made raid wide but nope, checked and it still specifically says party.

The new version reads 5% base mana per tick, 4 ticks. IIRC the new mana cost of CoH is 21% base man. Um, wtf? So the spell that at lvl 70 restores 1,000 mana per person (15 seconds of 333 mp5) is being changed to the equivalent of 400 mana? Oh well though, Devouring Plague may be alright and Desperate Prayer of course is good, so a positive change over all. I think they should make this version of SoH raid wide though.