GC on Priest changes

[Kelesti]

Taken from Ghostcrawler's blog:
here

• Retribution, Shadow, and Fire and Frost mage damage might be too low, but we’re still watching them
• Shadow priest AE, mostly due to a weak Mind Sear, feels too low.
  
• Priests are a little weak in PvP, especially at mobile healing. We have made some changes to glyphs and talents to enhance their survivability and instant healing.
• For Holy priests, we’re increasing Chakra’s duration and changing Surge of Light so it can now from Flash Heal and Greater Heal and can crit.
• We’re making some additional buffs, such as Pain Suppression and Barkskin, undispellable.
• We are probably going to remove Drain Mana from warlocks. It is incredibly situational in PvE but causes problems in PvP. This might mean we need to evaluate Mana Burn as well.

And of course, more to come.

Edit: Forgot one

• We are looking at Holy Concentration (after our most recent buff) and Omen of Clarity to make sure they don’t account for too much mana savings.

Bring out your tinfoil hats?

[dway72]

I may have to look at taking Surge of Light in my healing specs again.

[muto]

I would rather just have my old surge of light back, but also have it work with heal.

Your critical strikes from flash heal, and heal have a 50% chance to cause surge of light, reducing the mana and cast time of your next flash heal by 100%, but making it incapable of being a critical strike.

[Siri]

Looks good, personally I feel that holy concentration could get lowered to 15/30% instead of 20/40%.
Shadow priests do need buffs, especially in the aoe department, shit is horrible atm.

[dway72]

I would rather just have my old surge of light back, but also have it work with heal.

Yea, I think we can all agree that the old SoL was better.. but this is still an improvement. 6% chance on Heal, Smite, FH and GH (crit or not) is still a considerable upgrade.

What I would really like to see is to remove the duration of the SoL buff. Make it static until we use it... that way we could bank it for an emergency heal if we wanted to.

[hezzaba]

sorry about that kel i just got my password straightened out and didn't think gc had anything to do with what i had read x]

[New]

I felt Shadow Priests were doing decent damage but apparently I was wrong. I can appreciate that we didn't reign over the top of the meters like other classes, but I still felt competitive. I welcome a potential unwarranted buff to Shadow Priests .

[MoanaLisa]

I felt Shadow Priests were doing decent damage but apparently I was wrong. I can appreciate that we didn't reign over the top of the meters like other classes, but I still felt competitive. I welcome a potential unwarranted buff to Shadow Priests .

Mind Sear could use a buff and I've been expecting news of one for a while now. I don't expect it to go back to what it was or even be much better than Holy Nova but as long as it's roughly equal to the rest, I'm fine. Dots, decent nukes, and a viable AOE makes me very happy. So far, we're two out of the three. A Mind Sear buff won't have any particular effect on boss fights so I'll be surprised if our damage there changes by very much. We'll just have to see what it is they'll do. He mentioned PTR so this appears to be a reasonably major balancing pass, not just a bunch of hotfixes.

This is some stuff we are looking at so that you’ll have some context if you see changes on a future PTR. The final list of class patch notes for the next patch will doubtless be much longer.

It's a pretty interesting read.

[Oopsmezedya]

I felt Shadow Priests were doing decent damage but apparently I was wrong. I can appreciate that we didn't reign over the top of the meters like other classes, but I still felt competitive. I welcome a potential unwarranted buff to Shadow Priests .

"i suck but i still feel competetive"

yea that retarded mindset doesnt wash over with blizzard or the playerbase

[New]

"i suck but i still feel competetive"

yea that retarded mindset doesnt wash over with blizzard or the playerbase

Strange, I don't recall saying that.

In this world there will always be haves and have-nots. I merely stated a fact that I thought we were in a good place. Personally, I expected more nerfs to higher DPS classes than buffs to ourselves. These statements are based on not only feeling like things are going well, but also going with the historical knowledge of how Shadow Priest buffs have been administered in the past.

I would appreciate not misquoting me in the future as it is a sign of disrespect that I would not show to you in return. Also, to insinuate that I am mentally challenged is again very insulting. I assure you I have the correct amount of chromosomes and when I formulate my ideas, they are basic on what logic and data are available.

---------- Post added 2010-12-28 at 06:45 AM ----------

Mind Sear could use a buff and I've been expecting news of one for a while now. I don't expect it to go back to what it was or even be much better than Holy Nova but as long as it's roughly equal to the rest, I'm fine. Dots, decent nukes, and a viable AOE makes me very happy. So far, we're two out of the three. A Mind Sear buff won't have any particular effect on boss fights so I'll be surprised if our damage there changes by very much. We'll just have to see what it is they'll do. He mentioned PTR so this appears to be a reasonably major balancing pass, not just a bunch of hotfixes.



It's a pretty interesting read.

Actually you're right. I did neglect that our AOE has been lacking and am very happy to see changes to it. That was something that I didn't feel too solid about. Although, I do feel this will have some impact on our raiding lives as I've always found the worm adds on Magmaw to be somewhere we fell short. I can't recall another fight where a buff to Mind Sear will be useful, but aid to us on this fight is exciting indeed.

[Achtalon]

Good, mind sear sucks bad now. I find it useful for killing a hunter's snakes--not much else. Power Word: Shield feels incredibly weak as non disc as well. My shield breaks in like 2 hits from a regular 85 mob. Good thing I got a full mind flay cast off, oh wait.

[Ryuukon]

Strange, I don't recall saying that.

In this world there will always be haves and have-nots. I merely stated a fact that I thought we were in a good place. Personally, I expected more nerfs to higher DPS classes than buffs to ourselves.

I think at this point in the game it's better to buff the dps classes that are under-performing than to nerf the ones that are over-performing. Several dps classes at 85 are still holding the same dps they had at 80 in ICC. How is that supposed to make the last 5 levels feel like an improvement?

These statements are based on not only feeling like things are going well, but also going with the historical knowledge of how Shadow Priest buffs have been administered in the past.

I would appreciate not misquoting me in the future as it is a sign of disrespect that I would not show to you in return. Also, to insinuate that I am mentally challenged is again very insulting. I assure you I have the correct amount of chromosomes and when I formulate my ideas, they are basic on what logic and data are available.

---------- Post added 2010-12-28 at 06:45 AM ----------



Actually you're right. I did neglect that our AOE has been lacking and am very happy to see changes to it. That was something that I didn't feel too solid about. Although, I do feel this will have some impact on our raiding lives as I've always found the worm adds on Magmaw to be somewhere we fell short. I can't recall another fight where a buff to Mind Sear will be useful, but aid to us on this fight is exciting indeed.

I will admit that shadow priests do well on single target. Not great, far better than average even, and not bad either. IMO ret pallies hold that distinction. The main problem s.priests have had since 4.0 is the over-nerfing of mind sear. Fixing that problem will go a long way towards fixing the spec. Because multi-dotting with SW:P and running around like a chicken with its head cut off hoping to proc shadows is NOT a fun or interesting AE. Unless of course, you're in a BG with 40 people. Then it's a hoot.

[New]

I think at this point in the game it's better to buff the dps classes that are under-performing than to nerf the ones that are over-performing. Several dps classes at 85 are still holding the same dps they had at 80 in ICC. How is that supposed to make the last 5 levels feel like an improvement?

I assumed there would be a weird lurch period with gearing up and overcoming the new combat ratings. But you're right, it is more fun to do more DPS than you were doing at 80. I just didn't see it happening so I am pleasantly surprised.

[pickley]

I hope they decide to buff Vamp Embrace again 6% of your damage done seems incredibly low.

[Leeuwke]

I would rather just have my old surge of light back, but also have it work with heal.

Your critical strikes from flash heal, and heal have a 50% chance to cause surge of light, reducing the mana and cast time of your next flash heal by 100%, but making it incapable of being a critical strike.

That would be incredibly overpowered.

[Deleted]

well, hopefully they will buff spriests some more than just mind sear. on bosses i have around 7-8k dps with average ilevel 340. while a rogue friend of mine easily gets up to 13k dps with ilevel 333.

[Deleted]

Yea, I think we can all agree that the old SoL was better.. but this is still an improvement. 6% chance on Heal, Smite, FH and GH (crit or not) is still a considerable upgrade.

What I would really like to see is to remove the duration of the SoL buff. Make it static until we use it... that way we could bank it for an emergency heal if we wanted to.

But they are wrote: "..changing Surge of Light so it can now from Flash Heal and Greater Heal and can crit." It mean from FH and GH, not FH, GH, Smite and Heal.

If I understand well it will nerf that makes SoL useless.

[iLive]

But they are wrote: "..changing Surge of Light so it can now from Flash Heal and Greater Heal and can crit." It mean from FH and GH, not FH, GH, Smite and Heal.

If I understand well it will nerf that makes SoL useless.

It's not an grammatically correct text anyway, so I don't think we can look that detaily at it.

[Repo123]

Pain Suppression undispellable and a more than likely nerf to mana burn translates into a net loss for disc.

I hope the other changes have a siginificant impact in survival, or we will be less attractive in a pvp environment then we currently are.

[Deleted]

Priests are a little weak in PvP

A little? omg.
It's just the entire community of arenjunkies that feels Priest are horrible in pvp and rerolled...