Thread: Hybrid Priest

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  1. #1

    Hybrid Priest

    I'm a long time player of pencil and paper AD&D, and monks are by far my favorite class to play.

    If they won't give us a monk as a class in WoW (which I think would have solved the paladin/shaman balance issue instead giving the opposing faction) Think about this for priest talent trees...

    A merging between Holy/Dis Keeping Shadow in the same concept and giving the 3rd spec a Monk feel. Melee with high avoidance/crit. Hand to hand, maybe fist weapons and staves. Your spells would make your bare hands use light or dark power with your punches and whatnot. Keep SP as the attack because even tho you're melee fighting you're charging your fists with a spell. kind of like Shaman weapon buffs but on a hit by hit basis.

  2. #2

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Horrible's Protégé
    I'm a long time player of pencil and paper AD&D, and monks are by far my favorite class to play.

    If they won't give us a monk as a class in WoW (which I think would have solved the paladin/shaman balance issue instead giving the opposing faction) Think about this for priest talent trees...

    A merging between Holy/Dis Keeping Shadow in the same concept and giving the 3rd spec a Monk feel. Melee with high avoidance/crit. Hand to hand, maybe fist weapons and staves. Your spells would make your bare hands use light or dark power with your punches and whatnot. Keep SP as the attack because even tho you're melee fighting you're charging your fists with a spell. kind of like Shaman weapon buffs but on a hit by hit basis.
    This was the gist of the Discipline priest in the alpha. It was dropped for reasons that I do not know.

  3. #3

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Quote Originally Posted by [-Spiritus-
    ]
    This was the gist of the Discipline priest in the alpha. It was dropped for reasons that I do not know.
    I might be confusing it with something else, but I think it was simply removed because it was too powerful with heals (like Prot/Holy ended up being). Just like our battle ress :'(

  4. #4

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Quote Originally Posted by MushroomBomb
    I might be confusing it with something else, but I think it was simply removed because it was too powerful with heals (like Prot/Holy ended up being). Just like our battle ress :'(
    I don't think it was SP based... as the Alpha inner fire had an AP buff... so it would be on the same lines as a shaman. I think it became a gear issue, since AP based cloth would have to have been made.

  5. #5

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Quote Originally Posted by [-Spiritus-
    ]
    I don't think it was SP based... as the Alpha inner fire had an AP buff... so it would be on the same lines as a shaman. I think it became a gear issue, since AP based cloth would have to have been made.
    That sounds way more reasonable than what I'm saying, I have no idea what I'm confusing it with though :

    Would have been interesting if we, say, got an end-talent in Discipline to wear leather though...

    EDIT: Although it took them quite a long time to change the AP part to SP for Inner Fire

  6. #6

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    would be cool but probably will get alot of flamming on this website
    Waiting on Cata
    SCII: Naret
    WoW: Naret, Destromath US

  7. #7

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Quote Originally Posted by [-Spiritus-
    ]
    I don't think it was SP based... as the Alpha inner fire had an AP buff... so it would be on the same lines as a shaman. I think it became a gear issue, since AP based cloth would have to have been made.
    That's why I suggested keeping it SP based because your melee attacks would have spells powering them.

  8. #8

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr.Horrible's Protégé
    That's why I suggested keeping it SP based because your melee attacks would have spells powering them.
    Maybe an inverted form of Mental Quickness?
    ~Former Priest/Guild Wars 2 Moderator~
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  9. #9

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    If you have an original users manual you can see some of the remnants of this from Alpha and Beta. Priests had AP buffs for themselves among other things. I think it was redesigned due to the overlap with Paladin/Shaman. I think the closest we ever got to the 'Monk' type playstyle was Shockadins pre-BC. Then again they sucked without Shard and full T2. So..

  10. #10

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    I've always took Priests for the "healer type" and always shun upon games that give them a chance to "tank/go hybrid" I feel Paladins can do what you're asking.

    Keep them as they are. Although I think either disc/holy needs sprucing up. SO it's not just heal/dps.
    But nothing Melee. Something New. =O.
    Banned.

  11. #11
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    Re: Hybrid Priest

    bad idea.
    "I'm glad you play better than you read/post on forums." -Ninety
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  12. #12
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    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Very unlikely though. Since the discipline priest is VERY VERY different then a holy priest.

    They might both heal, but do not work/act/itemize and perform the same job.

    Their (like all healers) niche healers.
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  13. #13
    Deleted

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    I defiantly like the idea. I therefor combined it with a few of my own ideas which I believe priests should have.

    Priests should be able to forfill three roles:

    Melee dps (Staves/Unarmed/Fistweapons?)
    Holy Dps caster (Burn in righteous fire!)
    Holy Healer
    Shadow Dps caster
    Shadow dps healer

    All three talent trees should be valid for these different roles, getting rid of the idea of : disc=pvp, holy=pve, shadow=dps

    Also all spells should be classified as "words" and "prayers"

    Shadow word for shadow aligned spells (Obvious)
    Power word for holy spells

    Words affect single targets, prayers affect multiply targets (up to 5 friendly, or 3 enemy targets)


    Possible making it the following way for the melee:

    Passive skill:

    Path of the monk:
    100% of the melee damage dealt by the priest is converted into holy damage

    Path of the martyr:
    100% of the melee damage dealt by the priest is converted into shadow damage

    Trough deeper talents the priests gains more survivability/armor/avoidance, atp, melee attackpower, causing it to be near equivalent of that of a cat-form druid. (Also hybrid dps). The melee priest then becomes comparable to enhancement shamans whom melee dps and now and then throw in a (instant) spellcast like smite or holy fire.

    Additional spells that increase the benefit of melee priests as well as other spells a priest should have in my opinion.

    Power word: Sword; Increases the attack power on the target by 548 last 15 seconds, causes the weakened soul effect for 15 seconds.

    Prayer of the sword: Increases the attack power of the target and its party by 548, last 15 seconds, causes the weakened soul effect for 15 seconds

    Prayer of the shield: Shield the target absorbing X amount of damage, last 15 seconds, causes the weakened soul effect for 15 seconds

    Inner fire redone to its alpha form, increasing atp as well as spellpower and armor.

    Prayer of shadow word pain: Up to 3 targets in front of the caster gain the shadow word pain effect.

    Prayer of shadow word blast: Mindblast up to 3 targets in front of the caster

    Prayer of shadow flay: Shadow flay up to 3 targets of the caster


    Possible talents ( ideas taken from various talents of other classes), while writing this message I have taken into the account blizzards wish to make all specs valid for all roles. In this case, the "new" priests roles will be healer, melee dps, spell dps. Therefor the disc spec is still valid for healing and spell dps.

    Priest talents that can simply remain the same:

    Improved inner fire, Unbreakable will, Improved Fortitude, Martyrdom, Meditation, Absolution, Improved Mana Burn, Reflective Shield, Rapture, Aspiration, Renewed Hope, Pain Suppression, Grace, Improved Renew, Desperate Prayer, Blessed Recovery, Improved healing, Spirit of Redemption, Spiritual healing, Light well, Blessed Resilience, Body and Soul, can remain the same.

    Dodge: Increases your chance to dodge by 1/2/3/4/5%

    Twin disciplines: Increases the damage and healing of your instant spells by 1/2/3/4/5%, in addition melee damage is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%

    Silent resolve: Reduces threat generated by the priest by 7/14/20% and reduces the chance your helpful spells and damage over time effects will be dispelled by 10/20/30%, in addition armor is increased by 50/100/150% of your spirit.

    Inner focus: When active reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases the critical chance of your next ability by 25% if it is capable of a critical hit.

    Mental Agility: Reduces the mana costs of your spells by 4/7/10%, In addition Increases attack power by 10/20/30% of your spell power.

    Warden: Reduces damage taken by all sources by 2/4/6/8/10%

    Improved power word: Increases the damage absorbed by your power word shield by 5/10/15% and increases the effect of your power word sword by 8/17/25%

    Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of your power word shield by 2/4/6 seconds and reduces the mana cost of your power word shield by 5/10/15%, In additional increases armor by 50/100/150% of your spirit

    Stave specialization: Increases your chance to gain critical strike with staves by 1/2/3/4/5%

    Unarmed specialization: Increases your chance to gain a critical strike with fistweapons/unarmed combat by 1/2/3%, in additional it allows the priest to equip fist weapons in the offhand, requires a fist weapon in the mainhand.

    Improved combat: Increases your chance to hit with unarmed combat by 1/2/3% and increases your expertise by 3/7/10

    Enlightenment: Increases total spirit by 2/4/6%, haste by 2/4/6% and armor contribution by 3/6/9%

    Focused will: Increases critical chance by 1/2/3% and after taking damage you gain the focused will effect. Increases chance do dodge by 3%, stacking up 3 times.

    Focused power: Increases damage and healing by 2/4% and reduces the cast time of mass dispel by 0.5/1%

    Power infusion: Increases spell casting speed by 20% and reduces the costs of all spells by 20%. In addition when cost on self it also increases melee speed and increases your chance on a critical strike by 3%. Last 15 seconds.

    Divine heart: Increases attackpower by 50/100/150% of your level and 7/14/20% of any attack power on your currently equipped weapon, in additional your critical melee hits have 5/10/15% chance of making your next spell with a casting time below ten seconds to become instant,

    Chosen: Increases attributes by 3/6%, reduces damage recieved by 2/4% and increases armor contribution by 13/25%

    Divine Aegis: Critical heals create a protective shield on the target, absorbing 10/20/30% of the damage healed. Last 12 seconds. In addition your dodge chance is increased by 2/4/6%

    Borrowed time: Increases haste by 5/10/15/20/25% after casting power word shield or power word sword, increases the amount absorbed by power world shield by 8/16/24/32/40% of your spell power and increases the amount of attack power granted by power word sword by 8/16/24/32/40% of your attack power

    Zeal: Your melee critical hits enrage you, increasing all damage dealt by 2/4/6/8/10% and increases melee haste by 1/2/3/4/5%

    Storm of Holy Vengeance**: Holy fires all nearby targets in 10 yards every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. The priest must remain channeled while using storm. 25% mana, 3 seconds cast, 10 seconds channel.

    **Glyph of Holy Vengeance, Holy vengeance can no longer be interrupted.

    Holy specialization: Increases critical melee chance and increases the effect of your holy criticals by 1/2/3/4/5%

    Focus: Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting spells by 35/70%

    Divine fury: Reduces the casting time of your smite, holy fire, heal and greater heal by 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5%, In addition increases the critical chance of your holy spells by 1/1/2/2/3%

    Inspiration: Reduces the targets psychical damage taken by 3/7/10% after gaining a critical effect from your flashheal, heal, greater heal, penance, binding heal, prayer of healing, prayer of mending, circle of healing and while under the effect of power word shield, prayer of shield, power word sword and prayer of sword.

    Holy reach: Increases the range of your smite and holy fire spells and the radius of prayer of healing, holy nova, divine hymn, Storm of holy vengeance and circle of healing by 5/10%

    Searing light: Increases the damage of your smite, holy fire, storm of holy vengeance, penance and holy nova by 5/10%

    Improved prayers: Reduces the mana cost of all your prayer spells by 10/20%

    Spiritual guidance: Increases spellpower and attackpower by 5/10/15/20/25% of your spirit

    Surge of light: Your critical hits have a 25/50% to cause your next smite, holy fire or flash heal to be instant cast, cost no mana, but unable to critical hit. Last 10 seconds

    Holy concentration: Your mana regeneration from spirit is increased by 16/32/50% for 8 seconds after gaining a critical effect with any spell.

    Shadow word: Flay: Mind flay but renamed to become a shadow word.

    I will remake this message later through word to get a bigger overview and add more ideas from fellow forum-posters!

    Please tell me what you think about the idea of melee priest, shadow healer and holy dpser.











  14. #14

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Quote Originally Posted by Martyris
    Please tell me what you think about the idea of melee priest, shadow healer and holy dpser.
    Not gonna happen, not gonna happen and not ever gonna happen

    Take the shadow healer, shadow magic can't heal except parasitically. I can't think of any shadow spell in the entire game that gives health to one entity without taking it from another. So a shadow healer would also be a dpser at the same time, and would either be substandard as a healer or horribly OP as a combination.

    Holy DPS they've ruled out a number of times, probably due to PvP constraints. There's no res school for holy so a pure holy dps character would be able to skip spell pen. They could add such a res school, but then they'd have to rebalance pallies and healing priests. Then they'd need to come up with a rotation that was more than HF & Smite spam, it's a lot of work for very little pay back.

    Melee priest? Look at it this way - pallies & shammies can melee dps, druids can both melee & caster dps - they need one healer that's just caster dps to maintain some design differences.
    Your DWing, fist weaponing priests are just too much like enhance shaman.

    I don't get why people want every class to be able to do everything. Personally I'd settle for just getting our current specs working well in PvE and PvP.

    I'm not against the idea of a monk character in wow, it could be quite cool. But it should be an entire new class, lets not just throw away years of development on the disc tree.

  15. #15

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Quote Originally Posted by Martyris
    disc=pvp, holy=pve, shadow=dps
    Lol.

  16. #16

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    I don't think going backwards is the answer... but in retrospect, I wish they would have developed the disc tree as melee dps in the "monk" model.

    I think the only way such a playstyle could be implemented is when they introduce the new "hero" class that is almost certainty going to be able to heal... thus incorporating a "monk" like tree... perhaps something based on eastern religion (priest/paladin=western || shaman=native american/african || druid=ancient european).

  17. #17

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    I commend you for extensive thought processes....but its just not viable cause its just too much to handle right now.

    As this game progresses, dealing with hybrdi balance from pve-pvp is hard enough, in a game where every percent is tweaked and worked with till its close to balanced takes many people's full-time careers to handle. Priests just wont get an entire new conceptual tree.

    I would not be shocked if, as others have said, a new hero class will heal and have a dps offspec and probably wear cloth. But really theres just no room, have fun thinking about it though, crack the code and try to make yourself a "monk" in wow, itll be fun for everyone.

  18. #18

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    I always liked the monk idea and I was very disappointed that they never developed it. However, I think with some of the things they've done recently would make it workable; however, there's a lot of problems they'd have to solve before they could.

    First, Discipline is now well established and accepted as a viable and desirable spec in both PVE and PVP; in fact, it's probably one of the most successful talent trees of any class in the game right now. If they were going to work over the Discipline tree yet again, they'd have to move most of the healing talents from Discipline into Holy and try to work the Holy tree similar to what they've done with Feral so that a Holy Priest could build similar to Disc or Holy now, but not be able to have the best of both at the same time. I think that would take a lot of work, but I'm not sure if it's something they'd want to do.

    Second, they have to find a way to force Discipline to be in melee range while also giving them survivability. I think this means they'll probably have to do something to increase their armor (maybe keep the PWS talents low in the tree and accessible to the Holy tree as part of a build akin to the current Disc Priest) and Health (maybe make a shield that gives Strength and either converts from Intellect to Stamina or operates similar to how the Mage's mana shield works). I don't think they should wear leather or use fist weapons though; that defeats the idea of monk. Instead, they should continue to use caster gear and primarily be casters. Perhaps make a talent that converts SP to AP that also triggers something that makes it such that, even with a mace, dagger, or staff equipped, they still attack with their fists and use unarmed skill. All the Hit, Crit, Haste on caster gear wouldn't need any conversion to work.

    Third, they'd have to redo some abilities. I'd love to see Smite reworked, probably with some talents. The functionality of Surge of Light on Smite could easily be made into a Disc talent that would let them use it. They could add talents that would improve Holy Nova as a viable AOE ability. I'd love to see the Smite glyph worked into an actual talent instead. You'd probably still need a few other abilities to encourage them to use a Holy oriented ability instead of SW:P and Devouring Plague and could easily be worked in with various types of special punches or whatever.

    Anyway, as cool as I think it would be, I just don't see it happening for reasons others have mentioned. There's a lot of work to go into it, and a lot of balance concerns, not to mention the complaining about class homogenization. Also as others have mentioned, I think it would ultimately work much better as a new hero class that works like a monk and probably brings more healing along with it. Then you could have your holy caster, melee, and a new healer as well.

  19. #19

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    Another thing to consider - they clearly don't like mana as a resource for melee, or indeed any non-caster. Mana based melee inevitably have to be CD driven, and given the permanent problems that they've faced with Ret bouncing between a joke & OP I'd be astounded to see another.

    A monk would have to have two different resource systems, one for casting and another for melee.

  20. #20

    Re: Hybrid Priest

    In my opinion, the melee monk idea was a missed boat again on the Death Knight.
    Before settling on the DK being the new hero class, they considered necromancers and runemasters as the hero class for LK.

    Runemasters would have been this melee clothie/fist weapon guy with a lot of aesthetic appeal. I think it would've appealed to a lot more players. Instead they took ideas FROM necromancers and runemasters and worked them into the DK, ie Runic power and Ghoul pets. A serious waste in my opinion. DK's are fun, but they're not nearly as unique as a runemaster would have been, and runemasters probably would have been easier to balance with their sheer separation in terms of mechanics.

    But at the time, Blizzard had a very obstinate and favorable view toward plate wearing melee, it was obvious how much they wanted to promote classes of this nature. Maybe they felt apologetic toward paladins or something.

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