1. #1

    Desperate Prayer overhaul

    If they're going to stick with Desperate Prayer as the 10 pt. ability for Holy Priests something should be done about it to make it a little more useful and fun

    My idea is to allow it to heal or deal damage to any targeted raid/party member or enemy as well as heal yourself for 100% of the amount. The proposed talent Binding Heals could also work with this to create an additional heal, (maybe a glyph would be better)? This could definitely be a boost to Holy Priests in PvP as a burst damage/healing CD as well as create a more useful ability that can be used in most or all situations while leveling.

    It may be a bit like Penance in that it heals/deals damage, but I think it works out nicely that Disc Priests have a single target burst ability and Holy Priests get a multi-target burst ability. CoH is the more iconic spell, but not very useful while leveling in most cases, I think this fills the niche the developers were looking for.

    Any thoughts?

  2. #2
    If they did this it would feel too much like penance/holy shock on a longer cooldown. If they're making it your specialisation spell they do need to change it's current mechanic though, as a self heal that costs a large amount of mana (especially at low levels with almost no mana boosting stats) it is pretty useless.

  3. #3
    So you want to turn a 45 second cooldown from a "heal yourself and possibly a smart heal on someone else" into a "Heal/Damage that target, and possibly yourself?"

    Desperate Prayer may suck, but a 45 second Holy Shock that heals yourself too... that isn't very awesome either.
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  4. #4
    They have already lowered the cooldown and have given you a talent that makes it also heal the lowest health Party or Raid member for 100% of the amount that it heals you. The only difference from your suggestion is that you want to be able to use it to deal damage as well.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Abandon View Post
    They have already lowered the cooldown and have given you a talent that makes it also heal the lowest health Party or Raid member for 100% of the amount that it heals you. The only difference from your suggestion is that you want to be able to use it to deal damage as well.
    And it's still useless and bad. Go figure! I swear right now I think even lightwell would have been superior to that spell. At least you can use it while grinding to heal yourself for no mana...

  6. #6
    Well, if you include the talent it's more of a damage target and heal yourself plus one other person or heal yourself and two other people. You wont get full use out of it in most situations, but I think the ability to have a large instant heal like that on three people could come in handy in 5 mans for a little breathing room between Chakras.

    I didn't exactly want to include the "heal yourself mechanic", but it didn't seem right to completely change it :P Something like this would work fairly well I think, "Instantly heal or damage your current target for X and heal an additional party or raid member within X yards for 100% of damage/healing done".

  7. #7
    I've yet to figure out how Desperate Prayer became the Holy signature ability. It's just... wow.

  8. #8
    Reasons why DP sucks:
    - 21% of base mana. It's horribly expensive
    - Long cooldown. Even 45 seconds is long.
    - Having to talent your "signature ability" to make it remotely useful is by definition not cool.
    - It's supposed to be the reason to want to go holy at level 10. All this ability does is scream that "you will get into serious troubles every 45 seconds, but here's a stupid remedy".
    - Most priests would prefer to get lightwell instead, which for reference is the most universally hated talent in the history of WoW.

    Basically, Penance does everything DP does, better, cheaper and with a much shorter cooldown. It's also attached to the superior talent tree at the moment, despite disc's many flaws. And penance looks cool. The only use the holy tree serves right now for a lvl 10 priest is as a newbie trap.

  9. #9
    Guardian Spirit would be a better Holy signature ability. It can help you doing dungeons while leveling, or if you're solo'ing cast it on yourself and keep on attacking. A high cost self-heal that is part of a talent I would never get to make it semi-useful is a terrible signature ability.

  10. #10
    My problem with Desperate Prayer is that indeed it doesn't feel very iconic or amazing for levelling. The talent seems mostly for arena really, where you'll use Binding Heal rather often as well (not that I don't use Binding Heal in PVE, but not as frequently now as in TBC for some reason).

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Dianthe View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Abandon View Post
    They have already lowered the cooldown and have given you a talent that makes it also heal the lowest health Party or Raid member for 100% of the amount that it heals you. The only difference from your suggestion is that you want to be able to use it to deal damage as well.
    And it's still useless and bad. Go figure! I swear right now I think even lightwell would have been superior to that spell. At least you can use it while grinding to heal yourself for no mana...
    i actually see 2 issues in their current project of making DP the "iconic" holy spell :
    1-they say they'll put a talent to make DP heal the lowest health party/raid target for 100% of the amount it heals you.
    so what if we don't spec into it? you got it, all remains is a mere 45s self-heal. wtf?... that may be only me, but if i had the choice, i'd rather have lolwell as the iconic spell at that point for at least it can heal someone else without me spending any more points.

    2-even if they give DP already "talented" with that smart heal, having it being sort of an instant smart binding heal doesn't mean it'd be a better spell since it's meant to choose its target by itself, meaning a MT with the 2nd lowest health will still die because he won't be healed by the "magic DP". my point being, i'd rather see that improved DP heal my target instead of being a smart heal.

    oh, and there's actually a 3rd point : i don't see it as a greater improvement for leveling that guardian spirit, and i'd rather have the latter...

  12. #12
    A lot of classes are getting talents that reduce the cd on ability's by 3 sec per spell cast, Holy priests could get a talent that reduces the cd on DP by X amount of seconds per heal or damage spell cast cast.

  13. #13
    Even if it does get a cooldown reduction talent, it's still huge on mana cost, and a Binding Heal has the same effect (unless moving). So while Holy Paladins and Discipline Priests get offensive spells to solo/dps with at level 10, Holy Priests and Restoration Druids get a heal so they "don't die" trying to kill things? To me, this just says bad design. So much for Blizz making "all heal specs better to solo with" if your level 10 is to stop yourself from dying.

    Swiftmend isn't bad, but I definitely can't justify Binding Prayers as a talent point.

    Beta Testers: Say no to Desperate Prayer, say yes to Holy Nova!
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  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Kelesti View Post
    Swiftmend isn't bad, but I definitely can't justify Binding Prayers as a talent point.
    Holy Shock and Penance were really obvious choices. Swiftmend and Riptide - while not dealing damage at all - are still very iconic abilities situated in the core of the specc.

    However... Desperate Prayer? Once a racial, then a talent that I never even bothered getting until ICC, and I probably use 3-4x during a raid?
    It's just a horrible choice to be honest. And yes, Holy Nova would've made much more sense.

    Just imagine it from a new WoW player's perspective.
    Cool level 10, now I can specialise! Oh wow, PENANCE, I shoot BEAMS and it heals and deals damage AWWWWESOME! and OMG Holy Nova, it's a NOVA that melts faces and HEALS ME!!
    Or:
    Desperate Prayer, sounds cool and very Priest-like! But wait... an instant self-heal every 45 seconds? I uh... I.. I don't even... is that it?
    Last edited by nevermore; 2010-07-23 at 11:55 PM.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Kelesti View Post
    Even if it does get a cooldown reduction talent, it's still huge on mana cost
    I agree that this is a horrible 'identifying' talent for holy, but the mana cost is actually not all that substantial. 18% seems like a lot until you consider it from the perspective of... base mana, which is a small fraction of actual mana.

    Consider that at 70, contemporary base mana for a priest was 2620. At 80, 10 levels later, it sits at 3863 today. While we will see an increase once again as we level to 85, it will likely fall in a range of similar proportion to the overall mana pool. If we're running around with 40k mana at 85 and base mana jumps to say 5k, the cost would be 900 mana (before any discounts via talents), which is not that bad at all.

    Edit: realized I was taking this out of the context of low levels. But even there, it will lie below the cost of a FH or Renew, slightly more than a Smite. Yet it's only 1/2 the cost of a GH and 60% of that of a BH.
    Last edited by Bigslick; 2010-07-24 at 01:31 AM.

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  16. #16
    Leveling a human priest back in vanilla, Desperate prayer even on a 10 min cd was extremely useful while leveling, but Desperate prayer was available to all specs not just holy, not to mention leveling was much harder back then. Now the more I think of it, Desperate prayer seems more useful to Disc then it ever will to Holy, in both PvE and PvP aspects, if you tweak it to do damage it becomes a crappy version of Holy Shock or Penance.

    I'm expecting a overhaul on Desperate Prayer from blizzard, I would not like to seldom use DP like Binding heal.

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