Cataclysm Priest Changes - Page 9

Ellyh · 06/09/10, 11:54 PM

GC has commented on the disc smite tallents World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> New Disc Tree design.

The basic idea is you can choose to add some damage to your healing if you are soloing, in PvP, or even raiding encounters which aren't particularly demanding for you to heal. For those situations where you really need to heal, you'll do better with a talent build that focuses on healing.

It's something we're likely to try with all the healing specs, or else decide it's a bad idea.

While it looks very sexy right now I do have concerns that they won't be able to make it work for the traditional reason of 2 Jack of all trades being less than 2 specialists. I also feel that there is currently only 1-2 real talent specs in disc as you either go for smite support of PVP support. Currently giving about a 40% chance of this model not making it to live.

ildon · 06/10/10, 2:18 AM

Since the smite build posts are inevitable, I'll just point out right now that you can get 5/5 Chakra and Power Infusion and still have a point left for 1/2 Aspiration.

On a more important note, you can get every single talent in the shadow tree, put the "required" 8 in disc, and still have 2 left over (which conveniently fit into focused power)(link). I mean, is this really the intent? Almost every other talent you can grab exclusively affects holy spells or healing spells, other than spell warding which requires 5 useless talents to be spent. There's literally no decisions or trade-offs to be made for shadow right now, unless you want to drop form and start healing. I can't see the spec going live like this.

Centarion · 06/10/10, 4:42 AM

Well, if you don't take Silence, Disarm or Dark Thoughts (which is the same as the Improved Shadowform ?), you can take Power Word: Barrier (link).

So there is a choice between more personal/offensive utility or raidhelping/defensive one.
(Don't forget they intend to throw away all threatreducing talents anyway.)

Cadfael · 06/10/10, 5:14 AM

Originally Posted by Centarion

Well, if you don't take Silence, Disarm or Dark Thoughts (which is the same as the Improved Shadowform ?), you can take Power Word: Barrier (link).

So there is a choice between more personal/offensive utility or raidhelping/defensive one.
(Don't forget they intend to throw away all threatreducing talents anyway.)

Perhaps they meant pure threat reducing talents, not those that do something else at the same time (if those even exist).

It probably also bears to note that there is a huge difference in the tooltip what Improved Shadowform does between MMO-C and WoWhead. Or to be more exact, on MMO-C's it does nothing for pushback protection anymore.

Also I am of the firm opinion that Improved Vampiric Embrace is far too overrated (in the sense as too many people have it). The self-heal portion is halfway decent but the group heal is simply too weak (5% fully talented). Now I also assume that Shadowpriest's damage will scale less, probably much less in Cata relative to the HP increase, so in the end the health pools are much larger than our damage increase, making the improved talent even weaker than it is now. Of course I could be blatantly wrong regarding the scaling, but it's today already a bad return for your talent points and I just don't see at this point why it should be a wise choice in spending the points there even if there are not many options where else to spend the points.

Charmen · 06/10/10, 5:21 AM

Inspiration (3 ranks available) - Reduces your target's physical damage taken by 3/7/10% for 15 seconds after getting a critical effect from your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal, Prayer of Healing, or Circle of Healing spell.

It looks like they removed Penance from the spells proccing Inspiration?
Upd: Though on http://www.wowtal.com Penance is included in the description for Inspiration talent... So probably it is too early to judge.

Frmercury · 06/10/10, 7:31 AM

Please note when viewing MMO-Champion's talent tree that it's based off of the latest released Alpha build (Link)

What Blizzard actually released yesterday in text form is not the same thing.

emuron · 06/10/10, 8:56 AM

Based purely off what I use in my disc arsenal today, this is what i've come up with for a disc build

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Personally, I'm loving Archangel.

Overhead · 06/10/10, 10:42 AM

These talents definitely put discipline in a very awkward raid situation - at least for 25mans. For 10mans, I see them as a very cool addition as the third (swing) healer. Instead of alternating based off the fight, they're actually dpsing, in a form where they can continue to shield/renew tanks or other people getting focused, while spreading mediocre smart healing. In addition, they're in an amazing position where their dps and healing gear and spec are completely identical - pop archangel and they're suddenly there to help recover from any bursty phases of boss damage. Their smite damage seems to be efficient enough that it won't eat through their mana pool (at the expense of being sub-optimal damage).

TLDR: Amazing swing healer for 10man, fun main healer for 5man, mostly worthless for 25man outside of bubble spam. I don't really see this as a problem though - we're the only class with 2 healing trees, why not make them used in completely different situations?

As for the PvP aspect, this is amazing, especially for healing-heavy teams. Go in as dps, you have much less worry about going OOM then currently, you provide a bit of support, and you're the ONLY 'dps' class in the game that can switch instantly to healing/support with 0 loss.

Frmercury · 06/10/10, 11:14 AM

I think you guys are getting the wrong idea as the blood is rushing out of your head to your Smite stiffie:

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

The basic idea is you can choose to add some damage to your healing if you are soloing, in PvP, or even raiding encounters which aren't particularly demanding for you to heal. For those situations where you really need to heal, you'll do better with a talent build that focuses on healing.

It's something we're likely to try with all the healing specs, or else decide it's a bad idea.

...

I mentioned this in the healing forum, but I will reiterate. For a dps spec, damage is always useful. It helps you kill a boss and helps you get through easy content faster. Healers often have much less to do when healing isn't challenging or necessary. Our thought was that more damage could be useful while leveling, while doing easier dungeon encounters, and of course in PvP. The idea is that you have to give up some of your healing to pick up the damage talents. Sometimes that will be worth it. Sometimes you just need to focus on healing.

The occasional Smiting should happen during lulls in healing needed, but you should think about dual specing Shadow if a fight won't require you to heal at all.

Kirth · 06/10/10, 12:47 PM

Given:

Twisted Faith (5 ranks available) - Your damage done by your Mind Flay and Mind Blast is increased by 2/4/6/8/10% if your target is afflicted by your Shadow Word: Pain, and increases your spell hit rating by an additional amount equal to 4/8/12/16/20% of your spirit.

That shadow will be after spirit cloth over dps caster cloth for the most part and perhaps future priest tier sets will be reduced down to one type with set bonuses for each spec.

margaery · 06/10/10, 1:41 PM

I put together a version of a spec I'd try for general purpose raid healing: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.

I'm hoping they rework the upper half of the disc talent tree before Cata because I had to pick up some talents that probably won't get used. I really don't like this direction they're going with healers doing sub-par damage AND healing if they want to. What's the point? Jack of all trades, master of none IMO. I enjoy being disc and just healing with it, and I don't want to switch to holy. I've never specced 100% holy in my 4.5 years of playing WoW and I don't want to start now.

tedv · 06/10/10, 2:22 PM

Originally Posted by margaery

I put together a version of a spec I'd try for general purpose raid healing: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.

I'm hoping they rework the upper half of the disc talent tree before Cata because I had to pick up some talents that probably won't get used. I really don't like this direction they're going with healers doing sub-par damage AND healing if they want to. What's the point? Jack of all trades, master of none IMO. I enjoy being disc and just healing with it, and I don't want to switch to holy. I've never specced 100% holy in my 4.5 years of playing WoW and I don't want to start now.

Okay, what about this spec then: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

That sacrifices no healing talents except 15% on renew, but gains all the Smite talents, including Atonement (which actually heals). You might not be thrilled about damage talents, but losing a 9% reduction in stun and fear durations won't change your PvE output in any meaningful manner.

I don't understand how you're concluding that priests will do sub-par healing just because they have talents that affect damage. Yes that would be true if the choice were between healing talents and damage. But Blizzard has explicitly said they're redesigning talent trees to NOT include those choices. Healers always take all the healing talents they can get, and now choose between situational raid utility (eg. faster Mass Dispell) and low end raid damage (eg. better smites). You can have 100% healing effectiveness and 1% extra raid utility, or 100% healing effectiveness and 1% extra raid damage. This is not something to complain about.

I'm personally very excited about the damage talents, especially because they are aggressively priced. There are a lot raid fights where you heal most of the time, but have downtime with nothing to heal for whatever reason. I hate wasting GCDs, so I fill the gaps with small damage spells. I do a little under 1% of the raid's total damage, but hey, that's a 1% raid damage increase.

I think the real problem is that people associate themselves with their raid ROLE and not CLASS. I play a priest. Not a healing priest, a holy priest, a discipline priest, or a shadow priest. As a priest, I use any and all of a priest's abilities to further the raid's goal. At level 80 I would never waste talent points on anything to increase my raid damage, but I'm more than happy to spend otherwise wasted GCDs.

For example, my guild recently killed heroic Lich King (10 man). I was the discipline priest for the fight, and I'm confident we would not have beaten the DPS check without me spamming mind sear. In the phase transitions when healing is light, killing orbs with penance lets the real DPS spend more time on raging spirits. Rather than think about what abilities you want to use, think about what abilities best enable the raid to defeat the boss. If that involves casting Smite in my Holy or Discipline spec, I'll gladly do it. And personally, I'm happy about the wider variety of play style. It will help differentiate the tunnel vision healers from those with a better grasp of the raid's current status.

Originally Posted by Kirth

That shadow will be after spirit cloth over dps caster cloth for the most part and perhaps future priest tier sets will be reduced down to one type with set bonuses for each spec.

I don't see why that would be the case. The talent says 1 spirit = .2 hit rating. But 1 spirit = 1 hit rating for itemization points. I'd rather take a piece that has hit instead of spirit (or better yet, crit or haste) which simply gives a better return on investment.

margaery · 06/10/10, 2:32 PM

You bring up a lot of good points; it's not as if we have to sacrifice healing talents to get to the bottom of the tree, we just have to pick up some damage ones. I still don't see the point because I've never felt the urge to smite, but I guess if it's there it's there.

About the 3 points in the top talent, I just put them there because I was at a loss and trying to put the spec together quickly, plus I also just woke up and saw the changes. I like your spec a lot actually, so thank you for the reply.

Also, thank you for reminding me that I'm a priest & not just a "disc" priest. I still will never be 100% holy and I'll never be shadow, but I like the idea of variety in my preferred tree. You're right; it will separate the tunnel visions from the raid aware players. I have actually found myself helping the dps on occasion - especially on our recent heroic Saurfang kill and some of our 25 man kills.

Imua · 06/10/10, 4:32 PM

Disc build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I still have a point left for other things.

Disc still looks like it's going to be the bubble spammer. Let's face it: with the Absorption Mastery, that's where you want to be anyway. I seem to recall Blizzard saying that they wanted to give us a BIG bubble to use on tanks, which may be a useful deep disc talent, but all signs point to disc being the bubble spammer.

It's okay, though - disc spams bubbles and mitigates damage. Druids roll hots and Shammies Brain Heal. That's the way tree is designed, and if you don't like spamming bubbles, Holy looks like it'll be REALLY interesting with all the procs that may be happening.

There are some times in current fights to do damage: Deathwhisper when no adds are up, beginning of Saurfang, and we'll see what kind of encounters Cata brings to the table.

ecoue · 06/10/10, 4:58 PM

holy build (renew spec): Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
you still got some points left.

i think 'atonement' is nice if you got 'surge of light' up and are able to cast a free 'smite' which would heal a nearby meele instead of flash heal him (to minimize overheal).

depending on your playstyle an 'improved holy nova', 'choir leader' or 'body and soul' is very powerfull - dont know for sure which two i would prefer.