Are you happy with the priest cataclysm preview abilities?

[Ultima]

Are all priests terrible or is this thread just a collection of the worst?

They aren't as bad as your posting, well, mostly.

[Snub]

Not good and not bad, i honestly dont care if i dont like it ill re roll, plain and simple.

[BagOfChips]

Not good and not bad, i honestly dont care if i dont like it ill re roll, plain and simple.

Fight the power! Tell Blizzard you mean business.

[Zoros]

Holy is the talent tree with more increase % talents (Spiritual Healing, Empowered Healing, Divine Providence, Spiritual Guidance, Empowered Renew) So, with the new mastery system incoming holy will be the tree with more new talents.

Imagine three new mechanics like Serendipity, it sounds far better than a fat mushroom or a redundant area healing spell.

[Elothie]

Thinking of MindSpike blizz stated that it does the same dmg as a mindflay on sw'ed target.My average mindflay tick is 3300 in a 'good geared'' priest so mindspike will hit for 10k dmg normal and up to 20k crit (assuming shadowpower will affect it).I am happy with this. 8)

[Kaesebrezen]

Thinking of MindSpike blizz stated that it does the same dmg as a mindflay on sw'ed target.My average mindflay tick is 3300 in a 'good geared'' priest so mindspike will hit for 10k dmg normal and up to 20k crit (assuming shadowpower will affect it).I am happy with this. 8)

So your Mindflay will do about 10k damage in 3 seconds. And Mindspike will do the same damage in those 3 seconds.
So one cast of Mind Spike (and i think after stacking its debuff it does the same damage) will hit for 5k.

[AetherMcLoud]

From a shadowpriest perspective, meh.

Mind Spike looks sweet yes, but still doesn't give us mobility or kite-ability for pvp, and won't be in our normal rotation in pve.
And our normal pve rotation/priority could use some funk, definately. It has been 3 dots + MB/MF for like ever. Since the start of TBC IIRC.

I just really hope they will play up the shadow obs idea with procs and abilities that can consume them for special effects. Pretty much every other DPS class has procs to watch or some abilities that break up their rotation (even arcane mages can try to build more stacks with barrage before unleashing them with missiles). For shadowpriests it's always been a binary system:

1. All dots up? If true goto 2, if false cast dots.
2. Depending on equiplevel, MB on cooldown and MF as filler, or MF spam.

While of course there is certainly skill needed to do good dps (right now, because the thing that probably gives us the most dps increase is not clipping dots and mindflay, which is more of a bug prevention than an interesting gameplay/class mechanic) it would be more awesome if you had to make a decision like "Do I want to still have the 30% damage increase (or whatever) from my currently 3 shadow orbs, or do I want to consume one so I can have an instand mindblast? Or cast mindflay on the move (how absolutely incredibly awesome that last one would be, especially for pvp, and for movement heavy pve fights too!).

[Malania]

PW: Barrier and Life Grip. Should be fun but I was disapointed to be losing Prayer of Spirit.

[Ansa]

I came to think about where Life Grip would be useful in ICC for example

Marrowgar - Saving low hp players that get caught in the wrong place, though supersituational
Lady Deathwhisper - Moving the boss when going into phase 2 could be very nice to have Life Grip for
Gunship - Bringing back tank?
Saurfang - Almost no use, except maybe move kiters around

Festergut - Situational, but could be nice to pull in spores towards you, your raid will cheer at you^^
Rotface - Move OT further from the ooze?
Putricide - Saving orange ooze kiters around

Blood Princess - Little to no use
Blood Queen - Pull linked players?

Dreamwalker - Little to no use
Sindragosa - Pulling tank towards the raid at phase changes

Lich King - Pulling DPS out to outer ring at phase changes, saving falling ppl (no idea if that might work) that are dropped by Valkyries

And thats only looking at the latest PvE part of this expansion, pulling tanks out from bosses when they are to do nasty AoE would be the best usage, and doing tricky pulls would also make me want to love priests even more

Btw as for discipline, we will be getting +healing as our mastery and pretty much now we have only 4%-9% increased healing in the whole disc tree, so the healing numbers we are seeing will definitly be bigger

[Kelesti]

I came to think about where Life Grip would be useful in ICC for example
[...]

Marrowgar - People in the wrong place shouldn't have been standing there (the centre?), and they'll die anyways. The only other time you'd want to, you couldn't because they were impaled.
Lady Deathwhisper - It's handy, but timing your transitions and having a tank ready isn't really that hard. Body and Soul could also apply here.
Gunship - 30 yard range means you have to go edge-to-edge. Not a major point, but one that's liable for screwups on its own.
Saurfang - Getting people the hell away from the Blood Beasts

Festergut - Your raid won't cheer at you, they'll expect you to do it, because they want to maximise DPS uptime.
Rotface - Yes, Offtank away from Ooze, if it wouldn't be restricted.
Putricide - Body and Soul isn't disorienting like Life Grip is. Running away after you've been grabbed would suck, because just as many people would die as would be successful. They should learn to kite a wider path. If it worked on the Green Ooze (unlikely) it'd be nice there.

Blood Princes - Pulling your shadow orb tank closer, or an extra few yards on the Fire Orb target.
Blood Queen - Yeah, Linked Players. If you're one of them. If you're not, you're standing there taking more damage than you have to, because they're not doing their job.

Dreamwalker - Pulling an effective healer to a portal, or a non sprint melee to the other side when a skeleton spawns.
Sindragosa - Phase 3 tank swaps is about the only place.

Lich King - Falling people will almost always be either out of range (because they didn't control their Valkyr's direction properly), your dps is too low, or they'll almost instantly be LoS. I could even see a debuff going out that prevents Life Grip from triggering on a Valkyr.

And thats only looking at the latest PvE part of this expansion, pulling tanks out from bosses when they are to do nasty AoE would be the best usage, and doing tricky pulls would also make me want to love priests even more

Priests have lots of love. But pulling tanks usually has bad ideas (cleave effects and cones come to mind). Its more trouble trying to get a boss repositioned than it is to heal through the damage

Btw as for discipline, we will be getting +healing as our mastery and pretty much now we have only 4%-9% increased healing in the whole disc tree, so the healing numbers we are seeing will definitly be bigger

It's blizzard acknowledging that Discipline shouldn't have to suffer their own "hybrid tax" between two different sources of "healing".

[Ansa]

Well its also that the healing has been unbalanced in WotLK since,

In Burning Crusade, you need +healing gear to heal properly, making nonehealers not heal as strong as healers
In WotLK, you need just spell power and you can heal just fine except missing the %extra healing some speccs get
(Aka, in a double dps or w/e, you can pretty much heal just fine as a Spriest, Shaman, Paladin or a Druid)
In Cataclysm, it will be once again balanced that you have to specc something to be effective at it (which brings back a balanced, and more costumizable game once more)

[Namika]

Rogue gets tossed around more than a Gnome at a Tauren hackey sack convention.

Lolol! My new favorite.

Just curious - where would heal fit between Flash and Renew? I mean wouldn't we still toss one or the other? I've never noticed a gap there. Anyone else able to paint an image for me on this?

[Kelesti]

Flash Heal: 1.5 second cast, moderate amount.
Heal: 2.0 second cast, extremely cheap, moderate amount.
Greater Heal: 2.5 second cast, OMFG amount

Renew: wait 3 seconds, heal small amount, repeat 3 or 4 more times.

Heal doesn't fit between Flash and Renew, it fits between Flash and Greater.

[Frmercury]

Renew: wait 3 seconds, heal small amount, repeat 3 or 4 more times.

You're forgetting the innate Haste benefit to HoTs without a reduction in duration

[Kelesti]

*shrug* I was excluding haste simply because at 0 haste, it's easy to throw up the 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5 numbers. Simplicity's sake, if nothing else.

Plus, we have absolutely no idea about the new effect Haste has on HoTs, i.e. to what extent do we actually see additional ticks in Renew?

[Shrain]

I don't think the preview was bad, for a preview. It was not shaman nor warlock (honestly, pretty much my two favorites, and they were the first two!) but it was no hunter, either (Seriously, my second favorite class and all I got was this cruddy T-Shirt saying "Thanks for the stuff you already announced months and months ago...")

Life Grip is scary, only because I want to know more. And like others before me, I could see it getting canned come Beta. And by, "wanting to know more", I want to know if it drops threat from the target. Because then pulling tanks would be bad. Infact, even if it DIDN'T, pulling tanks would cause pugs to go crazy with, "y did you pull me" "Because you suck at tanking. The End."

I have non-priests telling me "The run speed buff is great! And you gain a decrease to mana!" Yeah, that would be great, if it were meant for leveling. Its just not worth the loss of SP, PvP or otherwise. Its situational, I understand that, but why not something better?

But I am find with Mind Spikes.

[klaugh]

I'm ok with it as a preview.

Shadow changes look fun and interesting (wish I could have a third spec).

Loose-mention of Disc being a tank healer :-D

The variety in Holy being reinforced by Chakra :-D

The masteries all look good.

Life Grip... I welcome it for PvP, but it's PvE usefulness is marginal at best imo.

PW:Barrier? Idk... if it turns out to be like Magic Shield or w/e the DK thing is called, that is basically a giant PW:S on the ground - Meh. If it's casting PW:S on X number of players at Y strength, that could be interesting, as long as they have intelligent management of Weakened Soul detecting and management.

The specific-categorization of the heals? Meh, I'll adjust to whatever system it ends up being, I just want to be comparable to everyone else.


Personally, I'd like to see something done with Lightwell and some modification(s) to Weakened Soul. I started off as Disc for PvP, switched Holy for PvE and loved every minute of it. Lately I've switched back to Disc and I like it, but Holy is just so much fun, Lightwell being fixed (or whatever is decided to be done with it) would be nice. Weakened Soul, while I can see it's intent and raison d'être, but I feel like it's a burden now, and it all but prevents a raid from bringing more than one Disc Priest. Special strategies have to be worked out ahead of time, are limited in applying their primary ability to certain groups of people instead of being able to throw it on whoever needs it, etc. Maybe make it so even only 2 Weakened Souls can be present at time, but only one PW:S with like 2 second window in between?

Idk, I'm not a class designer, and I will be playing my Priest regardless. I don't love the changes, but I don't dislike them either. I'm interested in seeing the next round of sneak-peaks, even if they aren't until official beta opening.

[Malania]

As far as PVP changes go. Could have been worse, could have been a warrior.

90% of changes were PVP balances and switches for the rated bg system basically.

[Trickie]

Lich King - Falling people will almost always be either out of range (because they didn't control their Valkyr's direction properly), your dps is too low, or they'll almost instantly be LoS. I could even see a debuff going out that prevents Life Grip from triggering on a Valkyr.

Seeing as mages can blink back to the platform indicates in my eyes that LF will work to grip them back if executed the right way

[Kaesebrezen]

Seeing as mages can blink back to the platform indicates in my eyes that LF will work to grip them back if executed the right way

Seeing as the design of Valkyrs didn't take Life Grip into account indicates in my eyes that LF won't work to grip them back.