Ability Bloat: Priest Edition

[Eiffel]

A bit unrelated, but speaking of glyphs I want, I thought about an awesome glyph they should add, that would also make Angelic Feathers more desirable, which they keep trying to do.

Glyph of (Insert Witty Phrase) - Causes your angelic feather to no longer be placed in the world and instead be auto-cast on yourself.

[TyrantWave]

Ok I just tested HW:Sanctuary and..

Skada: Skada: Chrysalis's Healing for Cobalt Guardian, 23:21:04 - 23:24:36:
Skada: Divine Hymn   3.00M (28.7%)
Skada: Echo of Light   1.70M (16.2%)
Skada: Circle of Healing   1.50M (14.3%)
Skada: Prayer of Mending   1.19M (11.4%)
Skada: Cascade   1.11M (10.6%)
Skada: Prayer of Healing   712.5K (6.8%)
Skada: Holy Word: Sanctuary   668.3K (6.4%)
Skada: Renew   463.5K (4.4%)
Skada: Lightspring Renew   72.1K (0.7%)
Skada: Rapid Renewal   54.9K (0.5%)

Just LFR dogs so not really trying, but still - used on CD it only did 6.4% of my healing. 80.9% overhealing. One cast of DH did 28% of the healing (Yay using it right before explosion hits!)

[Deleted]

A bit unrelated, but speaking of glyphs I want, I thought about an awesome glyph they should add, that would also make Angelic Feathers more desirable, which they keep trying to do.

Glyph of (Insert Witty Phrase) - Causes your angelic feather to no longer be placed in the world and instead be auto-cast on yourself.

Why would you want it to be cast on your self while its an excellent spell to place it on positions waiting for people to walk over to drop some fire orto get to a quadrant thats far away. Place it while damage is low and no harm done to your HPS and its cheaper than giving 3 people PW:S for body and soul.

The glyph you mention would turn the feathers in a Self cast cheap version of body and soul.

[Eiffel]

Why would you want it to be cast on your self while its an excellent spell to place it on positions waiting for people to walk over to drop some fire orto get to a quadrant thats far away. Place it while damage is low and no harm done to your HPS and its cheaper than giving 3 people PW:S for body and soul.

The glyph you mention would turn the feathers in a Self cast cheap version of body and soul.

Which is why I would want it to be a glyph, versus how it actually works. This is mainly for a PvE reason. In a lot of times, especially in a 25M perspective, trying to "set up" feathers for your own use, doesn't actually end up going towards you because someone else ends up running over it. Not to mention, the point of B&S is that you are essentially doing two things at once when applying a shield and is a much more convenient speed boost. They want Feathers to be more attractive, but having to waste multiple GCDs and not getting any other benefit, just isnt appealing in a lot of cases.

There are of course times when you can "set up" feathers and they won't go to waste, but overall, I would just like the option to be selfish and have them auto cast, hence the glyph.

[Thirteen]

I'd just rather have a glyph that can only make your target activate the feathers (and possibly only your target can see them?), though tbh, in a raid scenario, it's pretty easy to aim them, considering the person who needs them will most likely be outside the raid, kiting Focused Lightning or Lingering Gaze to a manageable position.

[nightfalls]

Main is a Paladin which surprisingly out of most classes I feel is very good on button bloat. I do play a priest so here's what I'd have to offer, the rest I don't really agree needs to be removed:

Shackle Undead is virtually useless. Haven't cast the spell since WoTLK I think. Kill it with fire. Or put it into the T1 talent line or something.

I agree with this and with Turn Evil to an extent, but you would need a lot of game re-balancing (PvP mainly) to get rid of all non-humanoid CC's. Still something I think could take a lot of "bloat" out of the game though and not something that feels very compelling to me.

Binding Heal and Flash Heal are rather similar in single target output (mostly), and cost the same amount of mana. Why not merge them, so that you always cast Binding Heal?

Agreed sort of with this. For being a choice that requires a ton of buttons, it's not a very compelling choice. Yes one will always be better than other in the same situation, but not by so much that you'd miss one being axed.

On the Holy Front, Chakra (the stance mechanic) needs to die a violent death involving chainsaws and fire. This will clear up a crapton of buttons. Also, having both chakra stances and armor stances is redundant. "Do I pick serenity + inner will + renew style today, or maybe I should go for serentiy + inner fire + somewhat flash heal heavy, or maybe sanctuary + poh + coh combos... eh, it doesn't matter, now does it? I'll just go with whatever and adapt my spell selection accordingly."

As they are today, Inner Fire and Inner Will isn't really an interesting choice in PVE. It's Inner Fire or bust, unless you really have to move really fast, in which case it's Body & Soul that is the answer.

I can't agree more with both of these. It's especially big for Holy Priests, in Holy I really feel how clumsy it is having two stance requirements none of which actually offer anything useful and yet they take up 5 keybinds all to themselves. I think both of these could use killing.

[Noradin]

Why would you get rid of spells just because you seldom use them? Just leave them in your spellbook instead of deleting them, that leaves others with the option to Play around with them as they wish. This is a MMORPG after all.
I wish I had some more very situational spells (from quests and such?) just for the feeling of them, maybe just move them to another tap in the spellbook?

No space in your interface is absolutely no reason to remove spells unless there are too many you absolutely have to use regularely, and even then I can't imagine how there can be not enough space for a player experienced enough to use them. Macros with modifiers offer 27 combinations of target and spell, each, and you can have a lot of them.
I won't even start into clique and healbot or similar addons most players learend to use by the time they leveled their character high enough to get all those spells.
And asking for help concerning issues such as these is good for guilds and the community. -> MMORPG. (Now I used both parts of the genre classification of the game to show why there shouldn't be less spells.)

[Deleted]

My feelings as a discipline priest:

The amount of abilities is generally quite good. Thankfully, a lot less than I used to have to contend with binding as a restoration druid. Personally, I don't think discipline needs heal. That spell could be totally removed with Atonement based healing being introduced at a lower level to compensate.

Similarly, renew should only be available to holy to give them a bit more of a niche separate from the shields of discipline priests. Alternatively, disc could be given an AoE smart HoT spell which adds lots of little Divine Aegis shields over time but doesn't apply weakened soul. This would come with a decently long CD (15 seconds or so) with a considerable mana cost. Aimed at addressing disc's inability to really do much to stem sudden severe AoE damage that was not anticipated and would be balanced to be weaker than Wild Growth in ticking AoE damage situations.

Prayer of Healing needs a little bit of a rework, especially if mixed group sizes are going to become more common with the expansion of flexible raid scaling. Flash Heal and Binding Heal should almost certainly be integrated into the one spell. This would also give priests a little bit more flavour in terms of their quick and costly heal.

Glyph of Penance should be baseline, as should the effects of either Inner Will / Inner Fire. Perhaps holy should be given Inner Will as a baseline ability while disc gets Inner Fire? Or vice versa, depending on what the spells are ultimately changed to do.

As to other changes? I think Smite damage should have a small secondary cleave element, just because I think it would be awesome fun.

[nightfalls]

Why would you get rid of spells just because you seldom use them? Just leave them in your spellbook instead of deleting them, that leaves others with the option to Play around with them as they wish. This is a MMORPG after all.

To be competitive in PvP you are required to use almost all spells in your book. Otherwise you are what the world calls a "bad" and should feel bad.

I wish I had some more very situational spells (from quests and such?) just for the feeling of them, maybe just move them to another tap in the spellbook?

Another tab in the spellbook doesn't accomplish shit. But for "situational" stuff like Eye of Kilrogg that provides minimal combat benefit are probably fine. Same goes for things in the game like Confession/Contemplation, those are fine also.

(Now I used both parts of the genre classification of the game to show why there shouldn't be less spells.)

You didn't show anything at all.

[Wheetos]

Prayer of Healing needs a little bit of a rework, especially if mixed group sizes are going to become more common with the expansion of flexible raid scaling. Flash Heal and Binding Heal should almost certainly be integrated into the one spell. This would also give priests a little bit more flavour in terms of their quick and costly heal.

Glyph of Penance should be baseline, as should the effects of either Inner Will / Inner Fire. Perhaps holy should be given Inner Will as a baseline ability while disc gets Inner Fire? Or vice versa, depending on what the spells are ultimately changed to do.

As to other changes? I think Smite damage should have a small secondary cleave element, just because I think it would be awesome fun.

I think these are nice ideas. It would be hard to see a situation where players wouldn't cry out if smite became a cleave, even though it wouldn't be significant at all. PoH changes are obviously needed though I think it hurts the synergy the spell currently has with spirit shell (especially fights like horridon heroic). Also agree with the penance glyph, I don't think there has been any point in time where I've not taken that glyph, in both PvE and PvP.

[Sekar]

Inner Fire and Inner Will could be merged into a single ability and keybinding by default, just toggling which was active, since, aside from the exclusive choice, each is equivalent to an always-on passive.

For example, one could call the combined active ability Inner Will, with its description being:

"A burst of Holy energy fills the caster, reducing the mana cost of instant cast spells by 15% and increasing your movement speed by 10%.

However, your armor and spell power are moderately reduced while this effect is active. Pressing the ability again will toggle it off."

In that example, meanwhile Inner Fire would become a passive, always in effect except when engaging Inner Will relatively negates it.

Inner Will should have its speed increase stack at least *partially* with the boot speed enchant, rather than being only a trivial +2% speed beyond such.

Prayer of Healing should not be removed but ideally redesigned as the group criteria doesn't fit battleground PvP well.

Shackle Undead is rarely used but not harmful to have; indeed, I'm looking forward to advancing my own skill by eventually getting better at recognizing when death knights pop lichborne, to shackle instead of wasting a psychic scream.

WoW isn't a single-player game played once through for only a few hours, but one where learning over lengthier time is and should be part of it.

Classic games, from chess to tennis, aren't designed to have a skill cap. While I'm not sure if I agree with a characterization of someone not using all relevant abilities as "bad" (more like having room for further improvement), if such makes a player "bad," then wanting to forcibly lower the skill cap for everyone else due to their own unwillingness to improve makes them far worse.

Holy priests never have and never should be the class for those wanting fewer abilities to play around with. If someone wants fewer keybindings, they should play a paladin or something. I hope priests don't lose more spells. While added fun abilities like Spectral Guise helped, I'd rather they didn't remove Mana Burn or even Mind Soothe. (Sure, I didn't use the latter very often, but that didn't mean I minded having it at all).

I *love* Chakra on a holy priest; I'm amazed at how much dps can be obtained through it, more powerful than I could ever imagine Blizzard granting to a healer otherwise, so I sure hope Chakra doesn't get removed, as it would be a huge nerf in practice.

The opening poster says he doesn't have a click slot for Mind Vision. I do, and I have it keybound to shift-T, which is easy to remember for me because T is where I keybind the CC chosen in the early talent. Usually it is void tendrils, but, if it is dominate mind, then T is dominate MIND and shift-T is MIND vision, so they go together. Just use a mod like Bartender to have plenty of bars; I can't imagine and would never want to play the game without mods.

Single-press (rapid) keybindings are important for the combat abilities which must be cast in a hurry, but some abilities (like mind vision) are just situational utility or fun, where a shift or ctrl combo is quick enough. Don't waste prime single-press keybindings on non-combat features like the default keybindings do. Default keybindings are terrible, but that is okay, as such amount to a skill/intelligence test for players to realize to remap. With that understood, handling the current number of priest abilities (and more) is no problem.

[thigan]

This thread show us why we are players not designers, in order of this to work you HAVE TO LOSE something that you think you need, if you don't need it then there is no point of discussing about it.

So what do you wanna LOSE.

I've playing Resto druid all this expansion and their Regrowth is the only single target casted spell they need, holy thru HW:Serenity and Disc with Shield+Atonement should be enough (they need tweaks), so merge Greater Heal, Heal and Flash Heal, maybe the size of GH with the speed of FH, but more expensive or something totally different but triage is gone since cata, we don't need three single target casted spells, druid proved it.

Renew should go from disc but PVPers cried to death the last time Blizzard tried, maybe some tweaking can be done to the rest of the toolkit to accommodate the need of having something to fake cast into and something related to the moving:

- PoM having charges and multiple can bounce at the same time maybe?.
- A glyph to Cascade that make it to jump X number of times regardless the number of members on the party.
- Something else.

In general Disc is overdue a redesign. Holy have couple of useless spells but more than remove them, they need to find which ones should be the good ones and remove the rest (HW:Sanctuary I'm looking at you, worst short CD in the game, not worth a GCD).

They need to redesign PoH, so maybe they can remove the need of PoM, even if IMHO it is a better spell (design wise), maybe remove PoH making PoM spammable, dunno what is best, in the end disc has atonement as smart heals, but holy, lets say its sad.


TL;DR: So that is for me:

- Only one of PoM or PoH, if they can make one of them a good spell for todays raiding.
- A new ST that substitutes GH, H, FH.
- Renew from disc and shadow, maybe shield from the non-disc spec (do you remember that?).

[nightfalls]

This thread show us why we are players not designers, in order of this to work you HAVE TO LOSE something that you think you need, if you don't need it then there is no point of discussing about it.

That's why ability bloat has persisted. Nobody at the end of the day wants to lose something. Reducing bloat is a direct nerf and I'm glad you understand it when so many don't

Renew should go from disc but PVPers cried to death the last time Blizzard tried, maybe some tweaking can be done to the rest of the toolkit to accommodate the need of having something to fake cast into and something related to the moving:

I disagreed with Renew going from Disc for partially that reason.

In general Disc is overdue a redesign. Holy have couple of useless spells but more than remove them, they need to find which ones should be the good ones and remove the rest (HW:Sanctuary I'm looking at you, worst short CD in the game, not worth a GCD).

Only one of PoM or PoH, if they can make one of them a good spell for todays raiding.
- A new ST that substitutes GH, H, FH.
- Renew from disc and shadow, maybe shield from the non-disc spec (do you remember that?).

Most of these abilities are actually frequently used, that is the problem. They are the opposite of good candidates for bloat removal.

Inner Fire/Will, Shackle Undead (if all non-humanoid CC's are removed and classes entirely rebalanced) are both good candidates as lets face it, they hardly add anything to the spec to begin with.

[Hand Banana]

Ive been seeing these "ability bloat" topics in every class forum, and I dont think it means what people seem to think it means. To me ability bloat means too many abilities that you need to use rotationally or to be most effective, not random tools like shackle and mind vision. Those are more for fun or to add flavor to the class or pvp niches; they dont contribute to ability bloat. Same with inner will / fire, in pve its pretty much a passive you dont need to care about im guessing but in pvp I often switch between the 2 and have a castsequence macro for it. In pve its essentially a passive you don't touch so why even bind it? Just throw it on the sidebars and hit it when you rez. Theres no bloat there, and in pvp its the same as d/battle stance on my war or blood/uh presence on my dk; its a meaningful choice which I like having.

[Thirteen]

Inner Fire and Inner Will could be merged into a single ability and keybinding by default, just toggling which was active, since, aside from the exclusive choice, each is equivalent to an always-on passive.

For example, one could call the combined active ability Inner Will, with its description being:

"A burst of Holy energy fills the caster, reducing the mana cost of instant cast spells by 15% and increasing your movement speed by 10%.

However, your armor and spell power are moderately reduced while this effect is active. Pressing the ability again will toggle it off."

In that example, meanwhile Inner Fire would become a passive, always in effect except when engaging Inner Will relatively negates it.

Point is, you gain one at level 9 and the other at level 83. And seriously, it's not like there's anyone that doesn't have them macro'd to the same button. The ability bloat includes only abilities that are actually functional (so not stuff like Mind Vision, which is gimmicky at best), but aren't used simply because they don't fit anywhere.

[Deleted]

No need to make this game a second Guildwars 2, if you cant handle alot of spells, well, then i suggest to learn to play.

[Alanar]

priests really don't have that much ability bloat. i'd say that they're pretty solid in terms of having a good mix of abilities with their own uses without much redundancy.

druids and prot wars, otoh...

Afther playing spriest for 6 years, I think with the recent addition to glyphs we could add more spells like holy nova in a glyph kinda style.

OT a little Get rid of mind control and psyfiend in that tier. Mind control should be made base line and psyfiend should just be replaced by something non fear. God I hate to pick psyfiend when stuff dr with each other.

Anyway I would love to see more glyph slots added and spells added to it.

ps: Guys please understand this is not because we have to many keys.. god. In the end we need to get rid of more cc next expansion.

[nobodysbaby]

I don't see a need to remove any spell tbh. If there are spells rarely used, like Mind Soothe, then bind it to some combo you don't miss anyway or just click it when you need it.. Mind Soothe had it's use when soloing dungeons/sneaking past mobs and trashpacks; remember Zulaman timed runs? And yes, I do miss it. We don't have stealth or anything else to make us able to sneak past mobs.

I also enjoy(ed) Shackle, it's an unique spell with a cool effect. If we just had some undead mobs to use it on (like we did in earlier expacks where CC was needed in dungeons for example).

No, I don't get why anyone would want to get rid of those cool spells because of space on your keys/spellbook? They have their moments in game.

If anything, get rid of Chakra stances, that would free up a few frequently used and important binds...

[Alanar]

I don't see a need to remove any spell tbh. If there are spells rarely used, like Mind Soothe, then bind it to some combo you don't miss anyway or just click it when you need it.. Mind Soothe had it's use when soloing dungeons/sneaking past mobs and trashpacks; remember Zulaman timed runs? And yes, I do miss it. We don't have stealth or anything else to make us able to sneak past mobs.

I also enjoy(ed) Shackle, it's an unique spell with a cool effect. If we just had some undead mobs to use it on (like we did in earlier expacks where CC was needed in dungeons for example).

No, I don't get why anyone would want to get rid of those cool spells because of space on your keys/spellbook? They have their moments in game.

If anything, get rid of Chakra stances, that would free up a few frequently used and important binds...

I dont think spells like shackle should be removed, but i think it would be better to put these situational spells in glyph forms obviously we would need more glyph slots.
I would love to see shackle undead in just a shackle useable on more types of creatures for example.

[veiledy0]

I would love to see shackle undead in just a shackle useable on more types of creatures for example.

Make MC baseline and replace the talent with smth that makes Shackle usable on beasts and humanoids.