And yet again GC shows knowledge!

[Elektrik]

Who cares honestly. I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that you aren't in a top guild. I'd be willing to bet that you don't have top hard mode gear. I'd be willing to bet that you aren't competing against people with top hard mode gear.

Bottom line - Guilds take spriests...all the time. Just like GC said. Yes, even top progression guilds.

As for you and I? If your guild has an issue with taking an spriest to a raid, that priest is either a bad player or nobody likes him. Or it's a chick and gets pissed when 24 guys are joking around.


edit: sorry Spiritus, this was directed at the OP, not you.

[Ninetales]

This thread should not exist.

[therealkami]

The flaw in this argument is that while there's more than one source for a buff/debuff, raids are going to want to take the better option.

IE not having your warrior have to go Fury
IE letting your warlock get up damage curses
IE not having to make your DKs take a subpar spec for Ebon Plague

It's the same reason why some, albeit not all, guilds are sitting spriests out for fights like Algalon. Sure our Shadow priest is an option, but it's not the best option.

My guild uses 2 shadow priests on algalon to eat the Big Bangs with Dispersion. It leaves our tanks with cooldowns to survive as well.

[Danner]

I personally don't really care if GC doesn't play or know the priest class. There are 30 specs out there, no one - including the lead system designer - will know all the finer points of every single spec and class. If he does miss a beat sometimes, that's really only to be expected. After all, do any of you know the primary rotation of every single spec in the game?

So if GC does miss a beat every now and then, and does say something wildly inaccurate, that's acceptable IMO. Better to have news with some mistakes in it, than no news at all. In overall, i'm very happy WoW has a person actually doing communication. The world of WoW news would be very boring without him!

I personally have no faith that GC has ever played a priest. I am fairly sure he plays a mage, and he has admitted to playing a hunter back in his non-employment days, so I think he knows his way around the hunter class fairly well too. I wouldn't know as I don't play a hunter. But he gives me that feeling. And think his remarks on the deathknight is fairly spot on as well, leading me to believe he knows the DK class. But as for priest - his knowledge is academic.

Now, the real problem begins when we get the big posts where ghostcrawler goes in and tells people of class X that they are wrong, and they are all whiners that need to learn to play. He doesn't put it like that, but when faced with a hostile crowd (which we are), then that's what it comes out like. I do not have any problem with GC not playing a priest. But I do hope and expect that there is at least one person on the system designer team that does have an in-depth knowledge about the priest class, someone who has weight enough to tell other people on the team where the shoe is hurting for priests, and pointing out to the rest of them when silly misconceptions are made. Someone to feed GC with the nescessary knowledge when needed.

And yet, I am not really sure about there is anyone playing a priest out there. Nethara admitted to playing one, but she's on another continent. There are devs logging onto priests at times, but I haven't seen anyone really playing one. And that's actually showing. Sometimes from GC, but more importantly - someone at blizzard who plays a priest should actually read over some of the more official statements, like the QA. I think it's obvious that didn't happen, there were too many things not quite fitting, and too few things actually said.

It's impossible to call the priest class neglected. Well, at least if we forget the 6 months of silly hymns, 3 years of lightwell, ~5 years of lack of shadowpriest scaling, subpar tier items, admittedly useless abilities aplenty and the eternally dreadful spirit issue. We are not a bad class. We can do the job. When we're complaining, it's not because we're faced with an unscalable wall.

We're just not really where it's supposed to be. A priest can heal well enough, but there's nothing to counter the downsides. It's explicitly stated that we're not allowed to be best at anything, and yet we're worst at a lot of things. There is nothing to compete against a combat ress. our fabled forte of flexibility as healers is stronger with the druids. And while priests make do, it's an uphill battle that is less slopey and less slippery as a 3.2 shammy or a druid. It's not really any comfort that the shammies had it worse for a VERY long time - they were long overdue for the buffs - but it's a bit of a downer still.

A priest can DPS well enough, but it's not exactly at mage or DK outputs. The difference is not enough to warrant NOT bringing a priest, but annoying to those playing one - you never really get to be "the hero". Every dog needs its day, and that's really what is lacking from the shadow priest perspective. Mind controlling on razuvious isn't really a hero moment. The best forte of the shadowpriest is the survivability, which is mostly a moot point in PVE anyway (maybe except on algalon. Who around 0.5% of the guilds in the world has seen).

I can only really speak for the holy spec. That's the only spec I truly know. My academic knowledge of shadow and discipline is probably better than Ghostcrawler's, but that's because I specialize in one class out of ten.

I would like to see some changes though. The common part of all these is that they aren't really buffs. They're just quality-of-life changes that will make life as a healing priest better.

- Lightwell. Remove the talent, rework it - anything. This talent is hanging back from the days when holypriests had NO single useful talent abilities. And it's reminding us about it.

- Meditation. If meditation is to be required, make it a Tier 1 talent. If not, make it a whole lot less monumentally required, and make us get more mana from elsewhere.

- In fact, rework spirit in total. Blizzard has but 4 stats in this game, and spirit is the nominal "manaregen" stat. Only it's worst at its job for every single class and every single specc except holypriests with more than 1300 int+spirit. That's just not adding up! Make it useful, or make it go. WC3 did good with 3 stats. As it is now, it's just glorified itemization tax.

- Mind Soothe. First of all, make it never pull the mob on failure. Blizzard did this for Mind Vision, shouldn't be that different.

- Mind Soothe. This spell could be useful if we could actually see the aggro range (before and after) after casting it.

- Greater Heal. It's too expensive and too slow. One of the two has to go. I would prefer it being the slow clunky heal, but then it can't be less efficient than a flash heal. Rework your mana cost spreadsheet formulas and factor in cast time and application time in the calculation!

- Stop saying that holypriest have enough mana. We know we never have enough mana for hard spamming, and you should know that you made us that way. It's okay, though. A holypriest with infinite mana is overpowered. I personally actually enjoy the mana management game of my priest, but it's a very though slope for fresh priests living of scraps. It's a game that should be easier at start, then harder. But you can figure that out at your own pace. Just stop saying that we're at infinite mana. That's an insult to the effort required to get to adequate mana.

- Start making two healing tier items. As long as spirit is subpar for discipline and crit is subpar for holy, tier sets will be subpar for everyone. I don't enjoy having to gimp myself in order to get a boring set bonus not worth the time spent implementing it. I haven't had a 4-setbonus ever - just wasn't worth ninjaing tokens from dpsers actually wanting them.

- Inner Fire. It's a lot better than in TBC, but charges is still not really an interesting mechanic.

- Please fix the remaining bugs in guardian spirit. It's not a bad spell as it is, but it's such a downer casting it, losing the cooldown, the tank, and then the raid due to it bugging out.

- Take a look at the lower end of the holy tree. Talents should be about "what should I pick" rather than "which of these talents is the least useless?". When the bottom half of our tree is devoted to single target healing, still being crap at it is silly. For a GOOD example of how a tree should look like, take a look at the UPPER half of the holy tree. We all love it. That's a though choice between lots of appealing talents (and meditation still wins out).

- While you're at it - less 5pt talents. For the children.

[Firegod1385]

If I didn't love you already for the thread about mana-regen trinkets for priests Danner, that post definitely would. There are so many points I agree with its amazing. ESPECIALLY wanting 2x healing tier sets, (being discipline) I always hate the rather "meh" upgrades - or sidegrades - i get from tier pieces half the time.

[Danner]

- Lightwell. Remove the talent, rework it - anything. This talent is hanging back from the days when holypriests had NO single useful talent abilities. And it's reminding us about it.

- Meditation. If meditation is to be required, make it a Tier 1 talent. If not, make it a whole lot less monumentally required, and make us get more mana from elsewhere.

- In fact, rework spirit in total. Blizzard has but 4 stats in this game, and spirit is the nominal "manaregen" stat. Only it's worst at its job for every single class and every single specc except holypriests with more than 1300 int+spirit. That's just not adding up! Make it useful, or make it go. WC3 did good with 3 stats. As it is now, it's just glorified itemization tax.

- Mind Soothe. First of all, make it never pull the mob on failure. Blizzard did this for Mind Vision, shouldn't be that different.

- Mind Soothe. This spell could be useful if we could actually see the aggro range (before and after) after casting it.

- Greater Heal. It's too expensive and too slow. One of the two has to go. I would prefer it being the slow clunky heal, but then it can't be less efficient than a flash heal. Rework your mana cost spreadsheet formulas and factor in cast time and application time in the calculation!

- Stop saying that holypriest have enough mana. We know we never have enough mana for hard spamming, and you should know that you made us that way. It's okay, though. A holypriest with infinite mana is overpowered. I personally actually enjoy the mana management game of my priest, but it's a very though slope for fresh priests living of scraps. It's a game that should be easier at start, then harder. But you can figure that out at your own pace. Just stop saying that we're at infinite mana. That's an insult to the effort required to get to adequate mana.

- Start making two healing tier items. As long as spirit is subpar for discipline and crit is subpar for holy, tier sets will be subpar for everyone. I don't enjoy having to gimp myself in order to get a boring set bonus not worth the time spent implementing it. I haven't had a 4-setbonus ever - just wasn't worth ninjaing tokens from dpsers actually wanting them.

- Inner Fire. It's a lot better than in TBC, but charges is still not really an interesting mechanic.

- Please fix the remaining bugs in guardian spirit. It's not a bad spell as it is, but it's such a downer casting it, losing the cooldown, the tank, and then the raid due to it bugging out.

- Take a look at the lower end of the holy tree. Talents should be about "what should I pick" rather than "which of these talents is the least useless?". When the bottom half of our tree is devoted to single target healing, still being crap at it is silly. For a GOOD example of how a tree should look like, take a look at the UPPER half of the holy tree. We all love it. That's a though choice between lots of appealing talents (and meditation still wins out).

- While you're at it - less 5pt talents. For the children.

--

Amazing what one day of wow news can accomplish!

I'm so happy :P

[[-Spiritus-]]

Open Q&A today... would be nice to hear some insight into the redesigned trees.

(1) Maybe a better answer on LW other than "L2P."
(2) Further explanation by GC on how he plans on making GH worth putting on my bar.
(3) Whats going to happen with gem sockets now that Red gems are completely useless for casters/healers?
(4) Will the INT/SPI synergy still be in effect?
(5) Will INT still give static regen?
(6a) Will meditation still be a talent, or will it become a passive ability or a long buff?
(6b) If a talent, will it be moved down the tree?
(7) Whats the current working idea for the coefficient for INT->SP?

[Abandon]

The old passive bonuses will be automatically added to your character through the Mastery system as you spend more points in a talent tree. Spending a lot of points in Fury will give you extra crit, etc ... this will be implemented for all classes.


Hopefully this means that talents like Meditation will be a mastery you gain by spending points in the tree as a passive, since the point of this seems to be to be to remove mandatory talents that give you functionality that you need to do your job.

[Kelesti]

The old passive bonuses will be automatically added to your character through the Mastery system as you spend more points in a talent tree. Spending a lot of points in Fury will give you extra crit, etc ... this will be implemented for all classes.


Hopefully this means that talents like Meditation will be a mastery you gain by spending points in the tree as a passive, since the point of this seems to be to be to remove mandatory talents that give you functionality that you need to do your job.

It would make sense, considering all healers are getting a Meditation based ability, and how Spirit is only relative to healers again (but this time with all healers).

[AetherMcLoud]

It would make sense, considering all healers are getting a Meditation based ability, and how Spirit is only relative to healers again (but this time with all healers).

What I really, really wonder about: While disc and holy priests surely will depend on spirit for manaregen, what about shadowpriests? GC said dps shouldn't worry about manaregen, and won't have spirit AT ALL on their gear, and will have no use for spirit. So what about spriests then? Regen through spirit? Or reworking replenishment again so it gives you all the mana you would ever need (but doesn't give mana to healers?)

[Abandon]

I was thinking about this:

Considering the changes they are making to stats (The removal of spellpower, attack power, armor penetration, MP5, ect) and the removal of mandatory talents, they might just make Spirit give you 100% of its regeneration outside the five second rule, and 30% while casting.

It would mean no caster would need to spent points to get a talent that every one of them needs, and you could balance it a lot more evenly if it gave the same regen to everyone.

[Zeuq]

Didn't I see somewhere that they were considering ditching the five second rule? Considering that it really is only of any consequence now to Holy Priests and, even to us, mostly a lost art, I really wouldn't be surprised to see that just completely go away. If that's the case, I suspect they'll just implement Mana regen much like Health regen such that you regen some amount when out of combat but it stops in combat and then a talent or Mastery will allow some amount of that regen to continue in combat.

This works well for all the other healing classes where a talent like Meditation isn't worth it to other specs, since they won't need Spirit, and only having one healing spec, a Mastery will work fine too. But how will that translate to a Priest? Will they put a Meditation like talent in the early part of Discipline or Holy and thus still force us to spend some points in another tree? Will they put a Meditation like Mastery on both trees which seems to defeat a large part of the purpose behind Mastery?

I like the change, but I'm very curious about how they'll ultimately implement it because a poor implementation could very easily make the situation less desirable than it is now.

[Shimo]

I been raiding in top guilds, casual guilds and average guilds during my 3 years. I can only say that shitloads of priests had l2p issues back in TBC, and even in Vanilla. You had priests that were brought there just because of the replenishment, and there was priests you brought for good dps and replenishment. Unfortunately, most of the priests i've been playing with didnt care about topping the charts since they knew they had their secured spot.

I am very positive to GC's comments, a good shadow priest is very hard to find.

[Dreamtail]

last night we did ulduar 25
on seeral attempts at yogg (mostly cause we had a different group of melee for portal duty) i came in at 12th , 4th , 3rd and 1st in dps the 12th was the attempt i died to early and the better attempts i was doing substantial amounts of dmg yet when we go to more single target type bosses my dmg slips comapred to others
we also did iron council and i came in at 11th which is a more single target fight as i wasnt dotting the other ones to pad the meters here

from what ive seen single target we really do tend to lag behind other dps but with so few single target fights any more we can go well i nthe more gimmicky fights

yogg is a perfect example where i alternate between dotting yogg and taking out the adds on p3 while other ranged more or less just take out the ranged

really what we need is some kind of buff to our single target dps that wont make us rediculously better in the gimmicky fights/aoe fights as mind sear does seem a lil OP. and also better scale-ability of haste or at least viable ways of advoiding it on our gear. i for one am unimpressed with seeing large amounts of haste on our teir gear and the amount of haste non set peices i find myself purposely seeking out crit gear much more then other casters in our guild who are more then happy to take either crit or haste gear we are really being pushed into taking crit gear due to scaling issues with haste

the haste problem makes me wonder are we going to be left further behind in ICC and 3.3?
hopefully we can get some decent fixes in cataclysm and this new nuke they seem to plan on giving us can fix our single target and haste scaling issues otherwise we'll end up being left behind other casters again

[Tablemaker]

There was another post where GC says they want to see more single target parses from Shadow Priests because most of the higher parses are coming from Mind Sear parses which... if none of you know, is completely over powered. I have no idea how Fan of Knives got a damage nerf and Mind Sear never. I've competed with the mechanical spiders in Mimirons hallway with Mind Sear.

[mchltlt1037]

This thread should not exist.

LELOUCH!

i thought you died O.O

[mchltlt1037]

reminds me of TBC some guy posted a vid of the purpose he wanted as a spriest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynjIoymWHvU

MANA MANA!

ITS THIS VID! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muxah...eature=related

Dude that vid is classic Mana mana! du du duduh! lmao shadow priests

[Dreamtail]

There was another post where GC says they want to see more single target parses from Shadow Priests because most of the higher parses are coming from Mind Sear parses which... if none of you know, is completely over powered. I have no idea how Fan of Knives got a damage nerf and Mind Sear never. I've competed with the mechanical spiders in Mimirons hallway with Mind Sear.

perhaps nobody wants to show them as they find it embarassing to be so far behind on single target dps
im sure they know its an issue and to be honest would you kindly stop mentioning mind sear as blizz is going to set its sights on it and be nerfed wouldnt you rather it stay OP for longer and hope blizz forgets to nerf it so we got something to be happy with until single target dmg is fixed

[[-Spiritus-]]

There was another post where GC says they want to see more single target parses from Shadow Priests because most of the higher parses are coming from Mind Sear parses which... if none of you know, is completely over powered. I have no idea how Fan of Knives got a damage nerf and Mind Sear never. I've competed with the mechanical spiders in Mimirons hallway with Mind Sear.

I really don't think calling something OP based on trash pulls is very accurate.

Mind Sear has many weaknesses. If your target runs away from the AoE group, you have to re-target and recast it, if your target dies you have to re-target and recast it. It cannot be "placed" on a designated AoE zone. It has a relatively small radius. You cannot "chase" mobs with it a'la FoK & Arc. Exp. Its damn near useless for IC med-mode.

That being said, it does have a very high damage output when the situation is ripe for it (IE- Mimi phase 3&4 [esp hardmode], Freya detonators, etc).

[Tempor]

STOP CRYING FFS