Build 12857 Changes

[Vook]

Why must all discussions break out into nerdrage arguments?

[Zoros]

And how come Mind Sear didn't get an AoE damage buff? Is it that far ahead of the other AoEs?

I don't know about the rest of classes, i just quested a bit in Hyjal before Starcraft launchment. Holy Nova felt absolutly underpowered, the amount of times I had to spam it to kill some mobs was really high compared with WotLK. I dind't feel any difference with Mind Sear. Priest numbers were terribly broken, Binding Heal amount for example was really low. So don't care too much about numbers, the correct ones will be there before beta end.

[Thrayne]

You are forgetting that while it is on DR we can't cast our major DPS talent. (you called this way in that thread last time).

We have no horror dps talent.

Fear and Horror are on different DR http://www.wowwiki.com/Diminishing_returns so you can still fear, only ablility you can't use is psychic horror, until the DR peroid is over only on the dispeller. It is a bit of a waste on a healer so it seems you are grasping at straw instead of admitting you were wrong.

You are going on in an ignorant manner making statements that are largely unfounded and if they are, it is on incorrect information or in complete thought processes. Stop nitpicking others that are trying to have a constructive discussion when you can't contribute thoughts without being wrong or QQing about things you don't understand.

TL;DR: Stop being an antagonist

[Annesh]

The reason I believe Sin and Punishment is still bad even with a 20 yard diameter (which is slightly larger than Blizzard and Shadowfury, by the way, so it's a pretty big area), is that I don't believe it will adequately discourage healers from dispelling it. The duration is too short, and it actually DRs one of our more important CC abilities.

I hate that it's balanced around the AoE feature, because it's impossible to rely on. Without anyone around the target, it's "just" a 3 second horror. With a bunch of enemies milling around, it's freaking devastating, but that's not good enough to always discourage dispelling it.

UA is balanced around it hitting like a truck and silencing the dispeller for a very long time. It feels like a massive hammer just came out of the sky and took a dump right on your chest; it's powerful incentive to never dispel affliction dots.

S&P is "just" the 3 second horror, with the slightly added bonus of horroring one or two other people nearby, which doesn't directly affect the dispeller and thus offers far less psychological conditioning.

The point of dispel backlash is supposed to be to condition healers to not spastically dispel every dot they see. And I don't think S&P will do that, even with an enormous aoe on it.

And of course there's the other problem of it DRing psychic horror. UA silence only DRs the silence portion of spell lock, which can still be used for its interrupt. What this means is that warlocks have never really noticed UA silence screwing them over on their actual active abilities. But we'll notice it a lot; it directly messes with our CC chain. This is even more reason healers won't be as conditioned against dispel, since they can intentionally dispel it to prevent psychic horror later.

If it were up to me the backlash would be homogenized just a little: it would be single target (like UA), hit like a truck (like UA but somewhat less), and be a 4 second stun instead. This way, it'll feel just as powerful as UA because it won't hit for half your health, but it will lock you down for 66% of the duration of a Kidney Shot instead of just silence you for longer.

Oh and yeah I am stupid for utterly missing the reality of the interaction between masochism and dispersion, LOL.

Still pretty neat changes, I like the mana mechanics they're giving us.

Oh and I love the BDSM theme of our talent names, LOL.

Shadowpriests: the creepy perverts of the warcraft universe.

[Ultima]

Why must all discussions break out into nerdrage arguments?

I'm curious as to what the definition of "nerdrage arguments" is.

Is it two people who have different points of view and refuse to even try to comprehend the view of the other? If that's the case, then sure. That's normal, even for people who are not "nerds".

Regardless, I think some people need to level their speechcraft. (Guess what game I've started playing recently ;D)

[Thrayne]

I'm curious as to what the definition of "nerdrage arguments" is.

Is it two people who have different points of view and refuse to even try to comprehend the view of the other? If that's the case, then sure. That's normal, even for people who are not "nerds".

Regardless, I think some people need to level their speechcraft. (Guess what game I've started playing recently ;D)

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?

[xxf2dxx]

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?

Nah, he started playing Plants vs Zombies

[Ultima]

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?

Yes.

Nah, he started playing Plants vs Zombies

Burn in righteous fire.

[Neichus]

Shadowpriests: the creepy perverts of the warcraft universe.

I think it's just the only way they can really differentiate Shadow from Warlocks as a whole (and Affliction in particular). I think they're doing a good job in Cataclysm ensuring that the two don't play similarly, but it doesn't hurt to back that up with thematic differences.

It's sort of like...Warlocks attack the body with weakness, agony, and exhaustion; draining away your life. They can also just bypass the body and swap, drain, or siphon your soul instead. Priests blast, flay, and control your mind instead (I also like the 'hallucination' effect you get from Shadowy Apparition); they also have religious overtones with things like Sin and Punishment.

Obviously this thematic isn't cut-and-dry (Priests have Shadow Word: Pain and Paralysis, Warlocks have Fear) but I think there's enough of a theme going on each side that it makes Priests feel like shadow in a "spooky" way while Warlocks are shadow in a just a plain evil way.

[Radux]

Also, going along with this: there were several renditions of religions that were kind of like... the more suffering I do in this life, the less suffering others will have after I die, sort of thing. A sacrifice/benefit sort of thing. /shrug. Maybe it was just a fantasy thing (Drizzt novels).

[Direshadow]

3 seconds can be a lot of time in Arena.

That's three seconds more to have my Silence come back off cooldown.

3 Seconds for a fear to come back.

3 Seconds to dispell as many buffs as possible.


Besides, it's a HORROR... meaning talents that reduce the duration of fear won't work, and things that break fear also won't work.

The fact that if you're near someone when they dispell it being a bad thing is just an added bonus.

[Annesh]

3 seconds can be a lot of time in Arena.
That's three seconds more to have my Silence come back off cooldown.
3 Seconds for a fear to come back.
3 Seconds to dispell as many buffs as possible.
Besides, it's a HORROR... meaning talents that reduce the duration of fear won't work, and things that break fear also won't work.
The fact that if you're near someone when they dispell it being a bad thing is just an added bonus.

3 seconds is not very long at all. It's two instants or two quick casts. You're out of it in no time.

And I'm sure everyone knows what horror effects are.

Actually, the fact that you think that old news is new news, that the aoe effect of s&p is good, and that 3 seconds is a "long" time in pvp, make me think you don't pvp much.

[Ananan]

I think it'll be great if they make it not have diminishing returns with anything, not even itself. With that in place you'd only dispel VT if you're seriously out of range or LOS of the priest, or you'll probably get a new VT during those three seconds.

If it's meant to have diminishing returns it could probably use a buff. The thing with Unstable Affliction is that it always hurts...

[Abandon]

3 seconds is not very long at all. It's two instants or two quick casts. You're out of it in no time.

And I'm sure everyone knows what horror effects are.

Actually, the fact that you think that old news is new news, that the aoe effect of s&p is good, and that 3 seconds is a "long" time in pvp, make me think you don't pvp much.

Less of the "I disagree with your opinion so you are bad at PVP" please.

And that is three seconds of being defenceless, unable to heal or help your team mates, and if you try dispelling once it ends, it happens again. Combined with our other control abilities which are all on different diminishing returns, like Fear and Silence, it's pretty good, especially considering the AoE range and rated battlegrounds.

[Annesh]

Less of the "I disagree with your opinion so you are bad at PVP" please.

more like "this doesn't agree with my pvp experiences, and i have a lot of pvp experience." but i agree, that statement was pointless.

And that is three seconds of being defenceless, unable to heal or help your team mates

kinda like intercept stun (3 seconds), death coil (3 seconds), gnaw (3 seconds), bash (4 seconds), ua dispel backlash (5 seconds) fear (6+ seconds), polymorph (8 seconds), etc etc etc etc.

that may seem like a weird thing to say, but so is your thing. yeah, it locks down your toon... kinda like every other cc in the game, so what did you mean by that?

and if you try dispelling once it ends, it happens again.

no, it locks you down for one gcd. the third time it locks you down for half a gcd. and then, for 15 seconds, you can happily spam dispel all the retard spriest's dots, and also the spriest is unable to use psychic horror on you as well.

Also note that if you spam dispel UA then you'll end up just dying from the Looney Toons-style 1000 ton anvils of damage dropping on your head.

Combined with our other control abilities which are all on different diminishing returns, like Fear and Silence, it's pretty good, especially considering the AoE range and rated battlegrounds.

I agree, rated BGs will place more value on it than in arenas. Then again no it won't, because in rated BGs dispellers will be smarter.

no smart healer will dispel shadowpriest dots while there's more than one other person around to get horror'd. but since that's the case, s&p ends up being situational dispel protection, where healers are more than happy to dispel your dots while solo or not standing near anyone, but let them tick in groups - where it's easier to keep people healed up anyway.

and that's a model i just can't get very excited about

if, like the guy above you suggested, it didn't begin any DRs at all, and was just a 3 second horror no matter how many times you spam dispelled it, that would be much, much better. but still weaker than UA in my opinion.

the way i see it, the problem is the aoe component. it makes the backlash potentially incredibly powerful - like in AV turtlefests - so it's judged on that merit while in the great majority of situations, when your VT target is alone or has only one or two other people nearby, where it isn't quite strong enough incentive not to dispel our dots, it's pretty weak.

note that shadowfury is pretty much the same effect, only you control it and it doesn't screw with your other DRs.

also note that i present other class spells not to whine about their toys vs ours, but to remind you that there are precedents that are more powerful than what we're getting.

[Thrayne]

Despite valid arguements in both directions I believe it is a great step foward. Spriests have really no dispel protection what so ever on live, end with 20% dispel protection any ret can dispel off your DoTs no problem. Healers just eat the 4-6K dmg.

With the decrease of specs that can dispel and the heightened mana value on dispel, I'm wondering how much will dispels will even be a problem. There has been mention about pvp being vastly different in cata with burst being the main point AFAIK.
Who is to say it ends there? Now many specs can dispel almost everything but as I said before alot has been done with dispels in cata.

I wonder if it has a maximum number of targets it can horror, which really doesn't make a huge difference in top end pvp.



As an alternative I believe making it easier to spread DoTs ( even just SWP) or after each mindspike you get 33% dispel protection, so after thre your DoTs would be protected. (Just throwing out ideas, not thinking fullly balanced numbers)

[Annesh]

i definitely would love a mechanic to make it easier to spread dots, something in the same vein as Pestilence or Soulburn: Seed of Corruption.

about the increased dispel cost, i just don't think dispels will ever cost more than dots. to make matters worse, two of the healers will be able to dispel both diseases and magic effects in one gcd, which hurts spriests more than warlocks (despite two other healers removing curses and magic effects, DP is a much more important and expensive dot than Curse of Agony)

one idea i kinda liked was to make the backlash a powerful mana burn (possibly drain ie returning some or all of the burned mana back to the priest) so that dispelling spriest dots is horrifically mana inefficient. so yeah, you can spam dispel spriest dots, but not for long. i like this because it suffers no diminishing returns; it's equally dangerous to dispel the fourth VT as the first.

[Thrayne]

Mana burning is an awesome dispel protection IMO

[Abandon]

Just a note, in the current Beta build, Improved Inner Fire is flagged as To Be Redesigned/Removed.

[Ananan]

That's quite nice. Any news on where in the trees Masochism and Strength of Soul are placed, and if Inner Focus is like the tooltip on the mainpage (45 sec CD, only usable with some healing spells)?

---------- Post added 2010-09-02 at 02:42 PM ----------

Oh, nevermind. Wowtal got updated and I never noticed.