World of Warcraft®

So, i'm looking at MoP and i'm becoming very concerned.

As a priest main, I already have 3 full bars of spells and not enough space (or time) for them all in holy. It's already feeling manic, and part of this is due to redundancy. In disc, I'm feeling ok in this xpac in 5-mans and as if tools are missing in raids, but the removal of atonement for the next xpac along with an already small toolkit for aoe leaves a huge hole in disc's repertoire which really should be filled by something else.

Now I'm looking at several new spells being added, and none of them really help the fact that pretty much all priest spells are fully manual (as opposed to some "fire and forget" with other healer specs) and that for every spell used by another healing spec, 2 to 3 must be cast by a priest. This means super-spam-cast-tastic playstyles.

Personally, I chose the priest for this complicated play style, but at this point priests are starting to look in this and future patches like affliction did in 3.0 before its rotation was streamlined.

I have suggestions for this:

Adjust talents to add viable variety between the two specs!
1 - coh/penance should be a one-or-the-other choice in a tier
2 - divine aegis/chakra should be a one-or-the-other choice in a tier.

Gaps in disc:
1 - add hots back to disc. renew is preferred, as disc has fewer active spells in the repertoire, and renew serves a unique purpose as possibly the only significant fire-and-forget health regeneration for single shielded targets.
2 - make binding heal available to disc. It's an important survival tool regardless of spec.

redundancy in holy:

1 - NIX Prayer of healing from the holy spec
2 - make renew and circle of healing hit harder to compensate.
3 - decrease the cooldown on circle of healing by 25%

* the new aoe healing spells will assist in covering the remaining gaps for both specs, we'll spend less time slow-casting PoH in holy, which already involves the use of SO MANY OTHERS, and our healing style will become more dynamic as each spell will now have signficiant power and significant difference from the next

Clunky mechanics:
1 - remove the "boosts % of x heal" portion of chakra - it should ONLY affect what holy word is available.
*other healers don't have to "stance dance" for maximum power for raid or single target, and we shouldn't have to either, it should be baked in.

In the end, if these are applied, disc will become a bit more dynamic, rather than the incredibly inflexible spec it currently stands to be in MoP (really? did blizzard not learn with paladins after 3 xpacs?). Holy will be more interesting and dynamic WITHOUT having to spam more spells; it will also become more reactive as the elimination of the redundant PoH will result in faster reaction time.

Binding heal and Renew are currently in the Disc "tool-kit" in the MoP beta. The talent calculators on the website do not accurately reflect what may or may not be in the live beta.

DA is an absorb. Discipline is the absorb, mitigation spec. There is no reason to make Holy a mitigation spec when it's strength is in it's raw healing power.

Why bother having 2 healing specs at all? Combine Holy and Disc into one. We should just be cloth wearing Paladins. Oh wait...

PoH has been a staple heal to the priest class since Classic. At that time, it was limited to the group containing the priest. It was a great day when they allowed us to cast it on the group of our choice.

In fact, there was a rather large uproar from the priest community on these forums when Blizzard speculated at the removal of PoH from the Disc spec and planned on replacing it with a "new and improved" Holy Nova. We can see how well that worked out. I can only imagine what would happen should they threaten to take such a heal away from Holy.

Chakra, while not the smoothest mechanic, was much-much worse before. It currently works fine. You have plenty of time, in most any situation, to change depending on your healing needs. That is, if you like to dance.

Priests are still in development for MoP. Anything we see or don't see, right now, is subject to change.

03/29/2012 11:27 PMPosted by Cerealkiller

PoH has been a staple heal to the priest class since Classic. At that time, it was limited to the group containing the priest. It was a great day when they allowed us to cast it on the group of our choice.

This argument was also used in the 60's for segregation. Just because something has been around for a while doesn't make it the best for a spec. Especially when it's so binary (really bad or really good), and when it's really good it gets nerfed to the ground (kologarn anyone?)

PoH makes sense in disc, which has a smaller aoe toolkit and is heavy on absorbs, so it just needs a basic casted nuke.

Prayer of healing in holy, though, is redundant next to COH and the new cascade, and even in the current content spends just as much time in the way of more specialized, agile spells, both in it's loooong... caasttt.. tiiiime.., and in that it hits hard enough to be used as an excuse to make all our other spells pretty horrid at scaling compared to their other healing counterparts.

In fact, there was a rather large uproar from the priest community on these forums when Blizzard speculated at the removal of PoH from the Disc spec and planned on replacing it with a "new and improved" Holy Nova. We can see how well that worked out. I can only imagine what would happen should they threaten to take such a heal away from Holy.

I think people would cheer at the idea of cooler, newer, more specialized heals, like mending, CoH, renew, and cascade actually providing consequential health within practical reaction windows, rather than being compelled to stop using these tools and spend the rest of the encounter watching their cast bar.

Holy has many more spells in its toolbox, while PoH was disc's one trick pony for aoe heals. Additionally, beefing holy's other aoe heals is a far cry from the use of holy nova as a gimpy, 10 yard, position dependent heal that makes the worst paladin heals of the cata beta look outright godlike.

Chakra, while not the smoothest mechanic, was much-much worse before. It currently works fine. You have plenty of time, in most any situation, to change depending on your healing needs. That is, if you like to dance.

Except for the fact that others can "change depending on their healing needs" without needing to gimp the healing they're currently doing to do so. They are also not balanced on a theoretical maximization of both states at the perfect times of every encounter.

Segregation? Racism? Really? For a spell discussion? Way to over reach.

I never said it was best. I said it was a staple. A long cast time? 2.1s/2s is long? If you don't like it, don't use it.

They were going to re-work Holy Nova and opted against it. Re-work, meaning, not the critter murdering, lowbie dungeon running spell it is now.

CoH had it's time in the sun when it was introduced. It was powerful and you could just spam it. It was all priest's used in Sunwell till it was nerfed.(Maybe they tossed a PoM every now and then also.) It was too strong and subsequently had a CD placed on it. Removing PoH, you propose to lessen the cooldown from CoH, when at one point it didn't even have one. I see no reason for Blizzard to reverse changes to a spell they are happy with and have already spent years "balancing". Maybe Cascade? Remove that 25s CD and let people spam cast that "newer, cooler, more specialized heal". At 14k a cast that won't chew through mana at all.

PoH was nerfed by 20%, during t11 I believe, if not slightly before. PoH still isn't Holy Radiance, which makes up 60%+ of a paladin's spells cast over the course of a DS encounter? Give or take, depending on the paladin I'm sure.

You imply Cascade as a mandatory talent and the whole point of the talent tree changes is to make no skill a "must-have". Whether it works or not remains to be seen.

People will cheer if the priest isn't broken at the live launch of MoP, like it was in early Cata. It is by player choice if they use the tools they are given. If you -only- spam PoH and nothing else you're doing it wrong.

I can see you only read what you felt pertinent to your cause. Your "argument" makes sense to you and that's fine. I don't know how long you've played a priest nor do I care.

I don't agree with you. The world is full of discord and differing opinions. Attempt to shred my posts all you like, won't change my opinion.

They were going to re-work Holy Nova and opted against it. Re-work, meaning, not the critter murdering, lowbie dungeon running spell it is now.

I will be very annoyed with blizzard if they change holy nova much/take it away from priests myself. It is one of the best node defending spells in the game (along with all the other spammable instant cast aoes). It really doesn't need to have a purpose in raids or 5 mans to be a useful spell.

Holy nova may have infrequently served any purpose in PvE, but it has had the same purpose in PvP since vanilla. It has gotten A LOT of use in AB and now gets use in gilneas SotA and IoC. Oh and AV. It's also occasionally used as a way to knock people out of stealth.

Haha. Yes, I understand where you're coming from on Holy Nova. I only mentioned it since it there was, at one point, debate on whether or not Blizzard would somehow change the spell to work in place of PoH for Discipline.

However, now that I think about it...Holy Nova, does, indeed, seem to be missing from our spellbook in the beta. There is still a glyph for it, so this could just be an over-sight as everything is constantly changing or they might be removing what they feel is an under-used spell. Though, I 100% agree with it's PvP uses.

Also, many of the spells that seems to be missing, such as atonement, have been reworked into glyphs.

Please leave my PoH alone. It's our only spammable AoE. CoH and Cascade are both cooldown-limited.

And if we had to start using Renew as filler, we'd just turn into gimped resto druids.

If you're going to start removing spells from the Holy toolkit, ffs remove Heal. That's a spell that has no business existing. Re-tune Flash Heal so that it's low-throughput and cheap again (but keep the short cast time). Buff Greater Heal a bit to make up for it. Presto, spell gone and the spec actually operates better.

Removing PoH would turn Holy Priests into (bad) resto druids.
Prayer of Healing is one of the few remaining AoE heals that let you actually pick who you want to heal.

That "hairball" of spells priests have composes the biggest and most envied toolbox among endgame healers. You have a tool for every situation. Don't ask for that to get nerfed away because you don't know how to use them all.

Edit:

remove the "boosts % of x heal" portion of chakra - it should ONLY affect what holy word is available.
*other healers don't have to "stance dance" for maximum power for raid or single target, and we shouldn't have to either, it should be baked in.

The chakra system provides a heal BONUS for using it right, and you're looking at it like it's a penalty.
If you know how to play holy right, you will know how to switch it mid fight for a powerful situational benefit, such as different phases. I think the chakra system works great as it is, it just forces you to use your brain more (Casuals: "How DARE I have to think in a video game! NERF IT NOW!").

You imply Cascade as a mandatory talent and the whole point of the talent tree changes is to make no skill a "must-have". Whether it works or not remains to be seen.

Guess what. It will be a mandatory talent for several fights, probably most, I donno. It depends on how it balances.

Did you actually believe it was possible to make a talent tree that didn't have "must have" spells? You're gimping yourself. No matter how much blizzard promises "equality" and "choice", certain talent sets will be mathematically better than others. The end. (Sounds like Obama really). Everyone's still going to use the cookie cutter spec. Everyone's still going to complain about lack of choice. The only change being done is less balancing components for blizz to worry about.

03/30/2012 12:53 PMPosted by Rizzea

Guess what. It will be a mandatory talent for several fights, probably most, I donno. It depends on how it balances.

It depends more on the fight itself.

Guess what. It will be a mandatory talent for several fights, probably most, I donno. It depends on how it balances.

Did you actually believe it was possible to make a talent tree that didn't have "must have" spells? .

No I did not.

My point was, someone shouldn't base an argument for the removal of something like PoH(on demand AoE healing & a class spell) on a -talent- like Cascade(25s CD and "optional")..in the event that people -choose- not to use it.

There will always be what's best and cookie cutter specs.

in the event that people -choose- not to use it.

I agree with your point, but "choose" is a very bad word to use in this particular context, given the comment you're responding to.

Am really tired so I just skimmed and pretty much only read this-

03/29/2012 10:32 PMPosted by Scalina

1 - add hots back to disc. renew is preferred, as disc has fewer active spells in the repertoire, and renew serves a unique purpose as possibly the only significant fire-and-forget health regeneration for single shielded targets.

NO.
Disc is a preventative healer based around absorbs. HoTs do not fit into our healing style at all, and if I wanted HoTs I'd play my Resto Druid or Resto Shaman. When I want Renew specifically, I've got my Holy spec for that.

I'm currently very happy with Disc's healing model and the additions in MoP look very promising currently. The only thing I miss as Disc is our old 30-second PW:S (since I raid 25s), but whatever. Not a big deal.

@Anarri

Thanks. I realize my wording isn't always so great. I appreciate you understanding what I was trying to say.

I'm pretty happy with the toolset available to both specs.

That "hairball" of spells priests have composes the biggest and most envied toolbox among endgame healers. You have a tool for every situation. Don't ask for that to get nerfed away because you don't know how to use them all.

Edit:

remove the "boosts % of x heal" portion of chakra - it should ONLY affect what holy word is available.
*other healers don't have to "stance dance" for maximum power for raid or single target, and we shouldn't have to either, it should be baked in.

The chakra system provides a heal BONUS for using it right, and you're looking at it like it's a penalty.
If you know how to play holy right, you will know how to switch it mid fight for a powerful situational benefit, such as different phases. I think the chakra system works great as it is, it just forces you to use your brain more (Casuals: "How DARE I have to think in a video game! NERF IT NOW!").

This is not true.

At this point, the fact that you have multiple spells for the same purpose means blizzard makes each one that much weaker. This means you must use more gcds to provide the same healing than other specs, with a cleaner toolkit, would.

The integration of spells like cascade are particularly worrying, as the potential for cascade to be more situational than chain heal, while always assumed to be used to maximum efficiency by the balance team, is very high.

Switching chakras takes gcds, while you're doing it, your proficiency at the current type of healing you do is diminished. Explain to me what is justified about this when other healing specs do NOT have to deal with this. It is assumed by the balance team we are ALWAYS in the right chakra. Chakra is not a boost to our efficiency in our "current" healing mode, it's a nerf to efficiency in others, and a tremendous harm to our flexibility.

At this point, the fact that you have multiple spells for the same purpose means blizzard makes each one that much weaker. This means you must use more gcds to provide the same healing than other specs, with a cleaner toolkit, would.

Don't like it? Don't play it. Play a spec with a 'clean' toolkit. Say...resto shaman might be more your speed? 5 spells? Of course, they're not really any stronger than ours, or any less situational...but there are fewer of them!

Don't ruin my spec. If I wanted to play a shaman/paladin/druid, I'd play a shaman/paladin/druid, and so should you.

(There are legitimate critiques of priest balance. 'We have too many spells' isn't one of them. Having lots of spells, especially AoE heals, is the defining characteristic of a holy priest, and the reason a lot of people enjoy the spec. We like weaving multiple spells together to accomplish a goal.)

Good news everyone. You will now need to dedicate 3 keybinds to Chakra instead of one, because the Live implementation is obviously too confusing so they're just going to give us 3 different Chakras to choose from.

You can always use your Mass Dispel keybind now that it is freed up by the spell costing 40% of your mana pool.