Prayer Of Shielding!

[Kalico]

I've been waiting for this since Blizzcon '08 where they first tossed out the suggestion.

...

I'm still waiting on it ._. It was somewhat of a relief reading Ghostcrawler mention that they're still looking forward to implementing it, but I'm dying to read a bit more details about it. But then again, with Arthas and his defile... I don't expect to see it any time soon *shakes angry fist*

[Ultima]

Actually, they're not adding more talents so we can go deeper into the trees(aka 56 point talents), but we'll have more talents in general, along with 5 extra points to spend.

Didn't I say that? Or am I reading this incorrectly? But yeah, time will tell.

Useless spell, would cost a truckload of mana.

Like Prayer of Healing for Disc Priests?

[harky]

Yeah, hate to break it to you, but the reason PW: Barrier wasn't put in is that it was given to another class. Anti-Magic Zone was one of the original ideas they put out for PW:B. Didn't make sense for multiple classes to have such a unique ability.

[fabian]

Didn't I say that? Or am I reading this incorrectly? But yeah, time will tell.

You might have, but how I interpreted was that we're not getting any new talents in general.

Yeah, hate to break it to you, but the reason PW: Barrier wasn't put in is that it was given to another class. Anti-Magic Zone was one of the original ideas they put out for PW:B. Didn't make sense for multiple classes to have such a unique ability.

That is A reason, not the only one. There were too many things that could potentially be a reason, and with the current talent structure, we'll probably never see it until Cata if it does become a spell.

[harky]

PW:B was scrapped at the same time that AMZ was put into beta. If you didn't follow beta you might not have seen it, but yeah, that's what happened. They thought the AOE bubble effect was the best option and thought it fit better on a melee class than a ranged healer. Don't really blame them.

[fabian]

PW:B was scrapped at the same time that AMZ was put into beta. If you didn't follow beta you might not have seen it, but yeah, that's what happened. They thought the AOE bubble effect was the best option and thought it fit better on a melee class than a ranged healer. Don't really blame them.

Ok, well the first time I heard SW:B was 3.1 PTR. If you can give some links to where PW:B was in beta, please do so.

[harky]

It never made beta as far as I know, but it was in talks early towards the end of BC and stopped being talked about much until 3.1 when they talked about it being brought back, then decided against it (because the idea as discussed was totally overpowered :P).

[fabian]

Thanks for the info, I started playing towards the end of BC and didn't really look at the forums or WoW websites.

[Balty]

Well they could replace Lightwell with this, seeing as Lightwell isn't the most popluar thing ever.

[Ynna]

Well they could replace Lightwell with this, seeing as Lightwell isn't the most popluar thing ever.

Except shielding goes into the Discipline tree.

[AetherMcLoud]

Except shielding goes into the Discipline tree.

Body & Soul would like to have a word with you.

[Raptorg]

Useless spell, would cost a truckload of mana.

Wrong..
This kind of ability would be amazing in an "oh crap" situation because it allows you to shield multiple people in a shorter timeframe than you can do now.

Body & Soul would like to have a word with you.

PvP talent, where Holy priests don't interfere with Disc priest shielding.
In PvE holy priests should fuck off with their shields when there's a disc priest around.

And don't bother with the speed is useful for getting away from aoe.. That's bullshit, and everybody knows it, encounters are designed in such as way you don't need the speed boost. If you need it, you probably suck. Tell your dps to suck less and read up on tactics.

[fabian]

Wrong..
This kind of ability would be amazing in an "oh crap" situation because it allows you to shield multiple people in a shorter timeframe than you can do now.

PvP talent, where Holy priests don't interfere with Disc priest shielding.
In PvE holy priests should fuck off with their shields when there's a disc priest around.

And don't bother with the speed is useful for getting away from aoe.. That's bullshit, and everybody knows it, encounters are designed in such as way you don't need the speed boost. If you need it, you probably suck. Tell your dps to suck less and read up on tactics.

Stop raging, just because you can not find a use for it does not mean there is not a use for it.

Anyways, utility is there to make the encounter easier. In the Deathbringer Saurfang encounter, if you can kite the Blood Beast a little bit farther, that could mean one less Range DPS switching to them. Not to mention it was extremely useful on Heroic Icehowl in 3.2. There is, and will be more fights that a little extra run speed can cause an encounter to become easier, which is the exact intent of utility. If you can not/will not see this fact, you are just ignorant and probably need to actually use it more often.

[Balty]

And don't bother with the speed is useful for getting away from aoe.. That's bullshit, and everybody knows it, encounters are designed in such as way you don't need the speed boost. If you need it, you probably suck. Tell your dps to suck less and read up on tactics.

Yeah I guess we shouldn't bother upgrading our gear to make stuff easier either then.
The movement speed helps in a lot of encounters. Why not make it easier?

[Regression]

Don't know how I feel about this yet...I'm still holy and loving it in Icecrown...we already have a shield, personally I think I'd like to see something else. But if that's what we get I'm sure we can find a way to make good use of it.

*edit* and to the person dissing B&S I find it particularly useful on tank movement fights where they need to be somewhere fast. Or are moving to get an add.

[Kraide]

Body & Soul would like to have a word with you.

And I would like to have a word with *it*. A few miguided priests take this talent and try to use shield more in PvE... but their shields are so weak and they take targets away from the Disc priest by putting 15 seconds of weakened soul on the player that was shielded. A true no-no. Promoting holy using shield in PvE is just not a good idea until something is done about the weakened soul effect.

[Blackriver]

I'm a rogue, and all I know is I love Disc priest bubbles. I take no damage in them even if I'm duoing a BC heroic or whatever, lol. They're always able to keep me at max health as well.

And Bubbledash is fun.

[Tezmata]

Both PW:B and CoH could be baseline, while Improved PW:B and Improved CoH could lower mana cost and casting time (PW:B) and lower mana cost and remove casting time (CoH) for Discipline and Holy, respectively.

The real problem with PW:B isn't that it would kill Holy since they could balance talents to make Holy just as viable as Disc; it's that it would effectively force Priests as a whole into raid healers for eternity.

[Regression]

Both PW:B and CoH could be baseline, while Improved PW:B and Improved CoH could lower mana cost and casting time (PW:B) and lower mana cost and remove casting time (CoH) for Discipline and Holy, respectively.

The real problem with PW:B isn't that it would kill Holy since they could balance talents to make Holy just as viable as Disc; it's that it would effectively force Priests as a whole into raid healers for eternity.

IMHO a change to GHeal on the disc side to reduce cast time or a mechanic change to our greater heal could be a fix to tank healing issues.

[AetherMcLoud]

Don't know how I feel about this yet...I'm still holy and loving it in Icecrown...we already have a shield, personally I think I'd like to see something else. But if that's what we get I'm sure we can find a way to make good use of it.

*edit* and to the person dissing B&S I find it particularly useful on tank movement fights where they need to be somewhere fast. Or are moving to get an add.

Yeah, I really like B&S too. But I realise that disc hate it in 25man raids (good thing my main spec's shadow )

Honestly, Weakend soul is the problem here. If it weren't for weakend soul (which fully prevents even trying to cast a shield) it would be possible to treat shields like other buffs:
1. Disc Priest shields target.
2. Holy priest shields same target. Gets error "a more powerful spell is already active" or somesuch but the target still gets the speed boost.

1. Holy priest shields target. Target gets speedboost.
2. Disc Priest shields target. Overwrites the holys shield.

But of course that would make shielding totally imba. Another kind of cooldown would have to be made for each target. But the weakend soul solution is really lackluster, and blues said on more than one occasion that they don't really like that particular execution.