My comments and suggestions about our focus.
by Disaster | 09/02/2007 11:43:15 Priests are the closest thing we have to a non-hybrid healer in the game of wow. We, like every class in the game, have a DPS tree. And some would say this makes us a hybrid as well. I would not because, like I just mentioned, it is par for the course; it is defaulted to us. Yet, in THE most important part of healing, we, warcrafts pure healing class, are one of the worst in the game. That part I am referring to is the holy trinity, used in role playing games for years. This is the theory that the tank holds agro, the healer heals the tank, and the dps down the mob unhindered. We, because of our less then average mana efficiency, are not as good at keeping the main tank alive during the longer encounters we see in the burning crusade. Well, you may say to yourself, I heal fine. I am sure you do; However to progress to the next step of your ‘career’, you need to first reach a particular requirement to start successfully being able to pull your weight in the further encounters. This means that ‘healing fine’ is not really appropriate to say, because ‘fine’ is a relative term. If you can heal better, you can progress faster and easier. Some of you like the current theory behind priests. Druids are better at healing the main tank. We are better at multi-target heals. Fair, right? Wrong. As I will point our all though out this post, multi target heals are not needed, nor especially helpful when doing 5 and 10 mans. The extremely few times when they do help us, does not make up for the major draw back we suffer for not having the ability to keep the main tank up for longer periods of time. This is especially true in burning crusades 5 mans, where battles are longer and more emphasis is put on these runs with the new heroic modes. Yes, we can eventually do these, but not as well as our hybrid friends and thus not as soon as I stated in the previous paragraph. The examples I use in the bellow paragraph are of a level 70 priest with +1000 healing. +1000 healing is extremely easy to get at 70, it is even somewhat of a poor quality healer, however, group heals only get worse as healing scales up, and 1000 is a simple number to work with. Talent wise, this theoretical priest has improved renew, healing prayers plus your choice of talents to boost his +healing to 1000 if any. The most common and efficient group heal is currently prayer of healing, not including light-well and prayer of mending of course as they are not relevant to this example. Prayer of healing gets about 1.3:1 heal:mana ratio on a typical level 70 priest with +1000 healing. At its very best, it will have all 5 members of your party in range and requiring heals. This gives it about 6.1:1 heal:mana ratio. At its absolute very best, in the worst of conditions, it still is only not quite equal to the efficiency of renew with its approximate 6.6:1 on the same geared priest. The absolute only reason a priest should ever use this spell is because of the need for speed. However, blizzard can not and will not add situations needing this kind of speed, as I will describe why later. Blizzard has designed priests to be somewhat based around burst healing. We can unload our mana-pools fast on a large group of players; however, we do not have staying power like that of hybrid classes. However, they do not include content that needs this kind of healing. For us to be more desirable then hybrids, we need damage to not only multiple targets, but multiple targets with fast heavy damage; otherwise a druid with HOTs is much better, as shown in the above paragraph. Blizzard however does not want any class to be NEEDED. They want druids and paladins and shamans to be reasonable alternatives to priests. Thus they can not add this content. We all know the theory of heals and over healing. With healing there is no bad, good, better, awesome like there is with dps. There is only enough and not enough. Anything more then enough is over healing. This means that if a druid can keep a party alive, (and so far, there is no encounter he can’t), then he is doing enough… and he is doing it more efficiently to boot. Hybrids are our allies in raids, but also our competition. In this crazy game of wow, all us classes want nothing more then to be balanced. However, do to some almost political issues; balance has managed to be ‘muddied’ some concerning hybrids. I think we can all agree that the druids and paladins ability to pay 50gp and make themselves a tank good enough to have warriors complain about it, is a pretty strong ability. Even in their healing trees, they do not do half bad at tanking so long as they bring the gear. Why then, do they expect to be not only as good as a priest at healing, but better at the most important aspects of healing? I can admit that do to healer shortages, healing is their usual place in raids, however, they picked hybrid classes knowing full well that they were hybrids; They now enjoy the comforts of not only being powerful healers, but also to switch at will when they desire it. Now all classes, priest included, has a DPS tree. However, we priests do not have nor expect the same dps as rogues and mages when we are shadow, yet they ‘get their cake and get to eat it too’. Heck, druids even get to take their dps and tanking spec at the same time. Priests have no such tanking spec. Now, to say that we would be stepping on paladin and druid toes if we were to become better at ‘main tank healing’ is unfair. I rolled the least hybrid of all healers, the one that should be the best healer so that I could in fact be the best healer. How I see it is that the hybrids are stepping on not only our toes, but a lot of toes such as warriors and rogues. There is no excuse why they should be better at healing then us. My last point is only somewhat related. Holy tree is the tree that has been on the receiving end of some of the worst talent spells. You may notice that these spells are ALL multi-target heals. It’s no coincidence that these bad spells follow that theme. What blizzard seems willing to do for efficiency with multi target heals, and what we would expect to make them good staple spells, seems far off the mark. Some may say we shouldn’t get a staple spell, situational spells are fine. However, like any situation, healing situations such as needing to burst heal the whole party are easily avoided. In all the instances I have done, and I have done all the 5 mans and partial 10 man, I have yet to see anything which even remotely requires our specialty. I have noticed my mana pool does run dry on most boss encounters and have had more then a few wiped because my mana efficiency was not up to the challenge. I believe of these holy talent spells, any 2 should be removed and we should be given 2 spells which better help us keep the primary tank alive. As for the idea that this will pigion hole priests into going into the healing tree; I think that is a completely unrelated issue that should not be considered when balance is in question. Issues with guilds pressuring priests into a tree is between a priest and his guild, after all, no one is calling for sheep to be removed because rogues get pressure in less direct ways to reroll. So, maybe you agree with me; what do we do to fix it? New spells, be it holy talents or standard spell set. Perhaps a channeled spell at the end of the holy tree, similar to Mind Flay. 4 seconds long to get the full use of our +healing gear, but with the same base mana:heal:time ratio. Being channeled, it could as a secondary effect have some sort of short term buff. Such as +10% armor while being cast, however this should not be added if it would mean taking away from the healing efficiency. Being channeled also means that you would not need to wait the entire 4 seconds before the healing took effect, making it a fair alternative to flash heal as well. Of course the downfall of the spell being loss of a lot of mana if you are disrupted, that goes with all channeled spells. This is just one example I feel is ideal, however, there are MANY ways to make our main tank healing better. Talents with % chance on heal to proc a pally shield, the ever dead horse of holy form if you want to ‘go there’, more spells or talents with mana regenerating effects, what ever. I’m sure blizzard could come up with something fair; the hard part is shifting their focus away from the situational spells. While i'm sure some of you will disagree with what I am saying. Many for honest reasons and many for griefing reasons. I’m sure that many of you will also agree with what I am saying as well. And I hope both sides take something positive out of this post. I tried to be as thorough and clear as I could, but I am far from an English professor. This is what I see wrong with our class and what I think the focus of our class should change too. I thank you for reading this far and hope you enjoyed the read. |
by Nethaera | 09/02/2007 18:15:55 This is a nicely written post. I wish I had something new to tell you all but I don't at this point in time. As always though, continued feedback and sharing your experiences with as many specifics as you can are always helpful. When we do have something new to share we will but for now you'll just have to be ok with us stopping in to talk now and then and read over the new conversations people are having. I hope that sounds alright to you because we really do enjoy getting to take the time to see what is going on with everyone. If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins. ~Benjamin Franklin |
by Nethaera | 09/02/2007 19:02:25
Oh don't worry. I have vays of making you talk! ;) But it's true. You don't have much of a choice other than not reading what I have to say and then you will just miss out on my infinite pearls of wisdom. *cough* If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins. ~Benjamin Franklin |
by Nethaera | 09/02/2007 19:21:33
You may be right in that. At the very core (and even mostly above) Priests are a strong class. In my own experience, there is a certain delicacy in evolving a priest though and of course skill. To my admirer that feels I have said nothing of consequence, please note that I specifically tell you I don't have anything more at this time. I wish there were something more but there isn't . That said however, I would much prefer to keep an open dialogue with as many people as I can so that when there is information to be shared, that I am understood better. Although, that's assuming I'm the one to carry the information to you. ;) We DO work as a team so any information we get we get as a team and relay as we can. I do prefer to not sanitize my personality or my interests too much since my job is about relating to others. I won't apologize for that. *Yes, too much feedback is far superior to not enough so please don't ever feel you are giving too much. [ Post edited by Nethaera ] There is a fury in sound that rings in the ears and settles deep into the recesses of thought. A clashing of blades. A dance macabre. All to tell the tale of battles fought for the love of glory. |
by Nethaera | 09/02/2007 19:33:41
Abandon all hope ye who enter here? Nah. I wouldn't go that far. I just want people to keep aware that we do our best to give information where we can. We just don't always have new information unfortunately and that's not due to any fault. It's just due to so many things needing time to be fleshed out properly and set up to work well with all the other parts of the game all at the same time. There is a fury in sound that rings in the ears and settles deep into the recesses of thought. A clashing of blades. A dance macabre. All to tell the tale of battles fought for the love of glory. |
by Nethaera | 09/02/2007 19:48:04
The priest class as a whole? No. Specific abilities being looked at ? Yes, a few that I know of but don't know any more details on if or when. As I've said before. Some other more hrm.. beneficial changes being considered that aren't just priest specific? Yes. But that's in the "Always" being considered, looked at and tweaked category. All classes are always being looked at to one degree or another. We just aren't doing big revamps or rebalancing anymore. It works better to make changes as we go along rather than focusing on just any one class. That said however, the more feedback we get on specific issues the better. Also, for those asking for what I've sent over, there are posts all over that have that information for you including exactly what threads from the forums I've forwarded. [ Post edited by Nethaera ] There is a fury in sound that rings in the ears and settles deep into the recesses of thought. A clashing of blades. A dance macabre. All to tell the tale of battles fought for the love of glory. |
| by Nethaera | 09/02/2007 21:02:19 I think it is better for everyone to look to small changes as well. There is a lot of refinement work going on and I would hate to encourage people to expect sweeping changes done or sweeping changes (for anyone) done very quickly. Expect changes a little at a time. While this bit of information isn't earth shaking, I do have a tiny bit of information on the cosmetic end of things. When using Holy Fire, people have noticed that it looks like a resurrection spell when you start to cast it. This is meant to be like this and is not a bug. Most spells of a type have the same or similiar starting casts but it's the finisher that makes it more unique from each other. The good part about it is that it might confuse the enemy into wondering who you are casting resurrection on instead of realizing there is a shot of holy fire about to go zipping down their spine. There is a fury in sound that rings in the ears and settles deep into the recesses of thought. A clashing of blades. A dance macabre. All to tell the tale of battles fought for the love of glory. |
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