World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Priest Concerns

Winkithia

< Molten Flan Babies >

Silvermoon

40. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 02:01:36 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
Priests do seem awfully weak at the moment, especially in terms of survivability.

I don't think any changes are in order until level 80 though. This is the more important question imho: given that your survivability increases dramatically in higher level PvP gear, do you believe that your set of offensive skills will be adequate to compete?

We can be level 80 13 days from now, so it's an issue. DoT scaling vs. resiliance and crit are both big issues. Spriest crit is low, and we don't have an ability where we can temporarily have high crit like arcane or frost mages. The DoT scaling change was based around afflic locks, but it destroyed spriests and that also continues at 80.

Winkithia

< Molten Flan Babies >

Silvermoon

42. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 02:10:53 PM PDT

DoTs, by definition, are not burst.

Dalcybel

< BlackFlag >

Korialstrasz

44. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 02:35:32 PM PDT

Good post, it should definitely get some attention. And to the guy posting on his rogue alt, good burst is not spending 6-8 queuing up spells so that our nukes on cooldowns will be able to hit for something decent, good burst is being able to put pressure on the other team with high damage right away. Now, I don't think we need to be a burst class, but honoestly, how often are you able to get all your DoTs up without having any of them dispelled before using MB and SW: D for maximal effect? Cuz I don't call a non-critting MB for 1600-1900 dmg and a non- critting SW: D for 1500-1700 burst.

EDIT: Spelling

[ Post edited by Dalcybel ]

Sijmister, aka The Greatest Man Alive

Splido

< Epic Roosters >

Cho'gall

45. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 08:04:32 PM PDT

I agree with most of what has been said in this thread. Our PVE damage has gone up greaty, I gained about 500 or more DPS on Brutallus (the Patchwerk of TBC). I think where we are lacking is in our PVP areas, I cannot count the number of times over the past week that I have been killed almost immediately as soon as someone targeted me. Dispersion helps a little, but again without any help getting the guy off me, I'm dead in 8 seconds instead of 2.

I see the major PVP problem being our class mechanic, a majority of our DPS comes from dots/flays. It is far too easy to dispel our dots, or lock out our ONLY tree, unless we drop shadow form. What we need is a spell that increases our PVP damage without making us overpowered in PVE. It's very frustrating to put up SW:P, VT, and DP, just to see them disappear in an instant. Our PVP damage against mages, rogues, palys, and other priests is mostly just SW:D, MB, and Flay, however two of those spells have a cooldown. I think it is about time that we got some PVP love.

"The Jedi gain power through understanding, the Sith gain understanding through power."
-Palpatine

Kamara

< Im From The Internet >

Barthilas

46. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 08:50:54 PM PDT

I would also like to bump this thread. It is giving good information about current Priest concerns and should, at the very least, get some acknowledgment that it has been read by a blue poster.

/This thread is relevant to my interests

Yeah. Whatever.

Ghostcrawler

Blizzard Poster

47. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:20:26 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
1) Dispersion. Some call this the 'self cyclone.' In other ways it's very similar to a mage's Ice Block.

We've gone back and forth on Dispersion. At times in beta it was overpowered and we backed off of it. We do think casting out of it would be too powerful. It's supposed to be a defensive ability, not something you do to keep someone from being able to counter you when you're wailing on them.

Q u o t e:
2) Being Dispelled... Dispelling resistance.

We are working on a redesign of the whole dispel system. This is a big topic, but to be brief:
1) It adds a lot of randomness to who wins or loses a battle, just based on whether the dispel worked.
2) Some classes were designed with powerful self buffs. It's hard to balance those when they are often immediately gone.
3) The whole strategy of junk buffs feels lame to both sides, but it's effective so players feel like they must do it.
4) Defensive dispelling (getting a debuff off of you) feels more legitimate than removing someone else's Fort or whatever. We want to try and steer the system towards that.
5) We need to be more consistent with dispel resistance among classes.

Q u o t e:
4) Hymn of Hope is useless in Shadowform...

We have some plans for hymns. More when we have the details worked out a little more.

Q u o t e:
5) Dropping shadowform to heal. Again, there is a severe mana penalty when we are forced to heal. All our healing casts cost a lot more plus we take on added damage and do less damage. While I'm fine with this increase/decrease aspect, I think the mana cost of switching forms needs to be removed entirely.

I don't think we'd remove it entirely, but we can look at how much it really ends up costing. There should be a decision involved with going in and out of forms, but we're re-evaluating what that is right now. Druids have a similar problem.

Q u o t e:
6) No real burst damage...
In PvP, Priests really don't base their overall damage around critting. Our current gear doesn't reflect spell critical strike...
As for Penance, I really like this spell. However, we cannot self-cast and it's also currently target-faced bugged.

We made a recent change to allow Shadowform to do more with crits. I believe the target-facing bug on Penance was also fixed. Preventing self-casting is by design.

Q u o t e:
7) Current Vampiric Touch is useless. You reduced the mana regeneration so raids are less reliant on Shadow Priests in order to run instance.

Um, Vampiric Touch does a lot of damage. It's coefficient was doubled and is now almost overpowered. When we noticed Shadow's damage was a little low, we gave a lot of it back just through VT. As far as Replenishment goes, I explained why we tied it into Mindblast elsewhere. It has to do with the cooldown - duration of the spells involved as well as not wanting to lose ticks.

Q u o t e:
9) Fade/Improved Shadowform does not match up with the tooltip. 2/2 Improved Shadowform states that it will have 100% chance to 'remove all movement impairing effects.' It doesn't remove Cyclones...

There aren't many things that remove Cyclones, but we'll look into how the bonus to Fade is implemented.

Q u o t e:
10) Overall Survivability. It's really lackluster.

Do you mean priests in general or specifically Shadow priests are squishy? We do think everyone feels a little squishy at 70. Players understandably got the new talents that enchance damage without getting the corresponding survival oriented ones that they will probably pick up in the next 10 levels. In addition, health just grows faster than damage on the way to 80. Compare PvP gear and you can see that it gains defensive stats a lot faster than offensive ones.

Q u o t e:
One reason why pre-3.0.2 that warlocks were more successful is that you could live over time through their dots and fears but their armor/survivability was high so they weren't focused as much. Basically they were a persistent CC nuisance.

Warlocks were designed to have high dps while Shadow priests were designed to have much lower dps. They were a utility class that paid in dps in order to justify their amazing group benefits. With the buff overhaul, we improved Shadow's dps significantly. (We also dropped lock survivability in PvP too.)

Q u o t e:
The other problem is that it currently has schizophrenic targeting. It jumps from target to target - I find always on the players I don't want. Plus it has a terrible time right now of getting kited in which you end up getting little to no mana whatsoever in the time it had spent chasing your opponent.

The Shadowfiend is actively changing targets without you commanding it to or in the absence of CC?

Pepor

< Juice VOX >

Laughing Skull

48. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:25:46 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
We are working on a redesign of the whole dispel system. This is a big topic, but to be brief:
1) It adds a lot of randomness to who wins or loses a battle, just based on whether the dispel worked.
2) Some classes were designed with powerful self buffs. It's hard to balance those when they are often immediately gone.
3) The whole strategy of junk buffs feels lame to both sides, but it's effective so players feel like they must do it.
4) Defensive dispelling (getting a debuff off of you) feels more legitimate than removing someone else's Fort or whatever. We want to try and steer the system towards that.
5) We need to be more consistent with dispel resistance among classes.

I don't REALLY want to go wildly off topic, but if buffs are made harder to dispel will Shaman see a comparable increase in totem survivability and will purge be given something else to compensate? *crosses fingers for defensive dispel*

I'm a Shaman! My main account was banned from the forums!

Winkithia

< Molten Flan Babies >

Silvermoon

49. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:31:27 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
The Shadowfiend is actively changing targets without you commanding it to or in the absence of CC?

Yes. I think it's probably something to do with threat mechanics and the fact that it's a pet. My shadowfiend macro is /cast shadowfiend /petattack and I just spam it to make sure he's going after the right guy.

Kamara

< Im From The Internet >

Barthilas

50. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:32:30 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

We've gone back and forth on Dispersion. At times in beta it was overpowered and we backed off of it. We do think casting out of it would be too powerful. It's supposed to be a defensive ability, not something you do to keep someone from being able to counter you when you're wailing on them.

Thank you heaps for the reply GC. It is much appreciated.

As a follow up question. Are you saying that dispersion is balanced? And on par with other 51 point talents?

Compare the 3 warlock 51 point talents to ours.

Haunt - DoT that increases damage and heals
Morph - Plate armor, increased damage, 50% reduced CC duration and new spells
Chaos Bolt - Armor penetrating damage spell

Dispersion - Mana return (which is a moot point, seeing you specified this is a defensive move), 90% damage reduction, still completely vulnerable to CC, self silence, 3 minute cooldown for 6 second effect. (Morph works for 30 seconds for 3 minute cooldown)

Regards, Kamara

(edited for typo)

[ Post edited by Kamara ]

Yeah. Whatever.

Meia

< Dark Pact >

Bloodhoof

52. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:38:08 PM PDT

I can understand the things about dispersion, but I don't get why it doesn't fully act like ice block if it's supposed to be like it. It doesn't necessarily have to remove effects, but why does it allow new ones to be put on, that's just silly if it's accurate?

I'm mostly healy anyway, so sorry to intrude, but the hymn thing caught my eye. Can I take that to mean that that's an angle you guys might be actually exploring in the future I hope? Channeling, but getting some benefit for doing so in the whole risk vs. reward scheme could be a really neat idea, and "hymn" fits in with the priest "power word" and "shadow word" thing.

Bankrlaydee

Kel'Thuzad

53. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:39:14 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
I can't wait to hear more on the dispel system changes. It has the potential to be huge for priests.

What if the change is no more offensive dispelling?

Bankrlaydee

Kel'Thuzad

56. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:45:14 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

We've gone back and forth on Dispersion. At times in beta it was overpowered and we backed off of it. We do think casting out of it would be too powerful. It's supposed to be a defensive ability, not something you do to keep someone from being able to counter you when you're wailing on them.

We are working on a redesign of the whole dispel system. This is a big topic, but to be brief:
1) It adds a lot of randomness to who wins or loses a battle, just based on whether the dispel worked.
2) Some classes were designed with powerful self buffs. It's hard to balance those when they are often immediately gone.
3) The whole strategy of junk buffs feels lame to both sides, but it's effective so players feel like they must do it.
4) Defensive dispelling (getting a debuff off of you) feels more legitimate than removing someone else's Fort or whatever. We want to try and steer the system towards that.
5) We need to be more consistent with dispel resistance among classes.

We have some plans for hymns. More when we have the details worked out a little more.

I don't think we'd remove it entirely, but we can look at how much it really ends up costing. There should be a decision involved with going in and out of forms, but we're re-evaluating what that is right now. Druids have a similar problem.

We made a recent change to allow Shadowform to do more with crits. I believe the target-facing bug on Penance was also fixed. Preventing self-casting is by design.

Um, Vampiric Touch does a lot of damage. It's coefficient was doubled and is now almost overpowered. When we noticed Shadow's damage was a little low, we gave a lot of it back just through VT. As far as Replenishment goes, I explained why we tied it into Mindblast elsewhere. It has to do with the cooldown - duration of the spells involved as well as not wanting to lose ticks.

There aren't many things that remove Cyclones, but we'll look into how the bonus to Fade is implemented.

Do you mean priests in general or specifically Shadow priests are squishy? We do think everyone feels a little squishy at 70. Players understandably got the new talents that enchance damage without getting the corresponding survival oriented ones that they will probably pick up in the next 10 levels. In addition, health just grows faster than damage on the way to 80. Compare PvP gear and you can see that it gains defensive stats a lot faster than offensive ones.

Warlocks were designed to have high dps while Shadow priests were designed to have much lower dps. They were a utility class that paid in dps in order to justify their amazing group benefits. With the buff overhaul, we improved Shadow's dps significantly. (We also dropped lock survivability in PvP too.)

The Shadowfiend is actively changing targets without you commanding it to or in the absence of CC?

Lots of good news, thx

Hey can we get shadowguard back for all priests? Its perfect for our clothie tanking role, allowing us to cast an instant (cant be kicked or pummeled) that is really only going to up our DPS in PvP, it also leaves the door open to add other effects to it later (ei:horror procs, or MP/5 or whatever you want to add.. or maybe nothing as in itself it is good just saying).

EDIt: Oh yeh forgot to mention the fun factor.. i have 3 spriests and shadowguard was the funnest spriest abiltiy i ever had

[ Post edited by Bankrlaydee ]

Natos

< Rollin Twenties >

Scilla

57. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:47:27 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
We made a recent change to allow Shadowform to do more with crits.

The problem with this is we are still largely spirit based in mana regen and damage increases by way of talents. The big oxymoron in this system is Imp Spirit Tap, which requires crit to activate a spirit based regen talent. Which is it? Are we supposed to regen through Sfiend and Dispersion and thus stack Int more, or are we to rely on Spirit Tap? If we are supposed to rely on stacking Int more for regen/crit, why does the damage increase as a % of Spirit portion of Twisted Faith even exist?

Q u o t e:
Um, Vampiric Touch does a lot of damage. It's coefficient was doubled and is now almost overpowered. When we noticed Shadow's damage was a little low, we gave a lot of it back just through VT. As far as Replenishment goes, I explained why we tied it into Mindblast elsewhere. It has to do with the cooldown - duration of the spells involved as well as not wanting to lose ticks.

Yes, VT will now do a lot more damage, but procing Replenishment off of it with MB is a relatively steep cost compared to other abilities that also proc it. Yes, MB is used often in high DPS rotations, but if an Spriest is wanting to conserve, guess what we don't cast much? So, with this mechanic in situations where we need to conserve mana (which you stated were supposed to become more frequent yourself) not only does an Spriest lose utility, but also DPS simultaneously.

Q u o t e:
The Shadowfiend is actively changing targets without you commanding it to or in the absence of CC?

I believe the OP was referring to the tenancy for Sfiend to not attack your target, but the closest attacking mob, which is usually dotted, and dies shortly after the cast. The Fiend will then lose time on its short duration moving from that mob to the mob you wanted him to be hitting. IMO the Sfiend's Attack should be a ranged attack akin to the mana wyrms in Kara near Curator.

[ Post edited by Natos ]

Laughs in the face of Aggro.

Vux

< with Pancakes >

Dragonblight

58. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:48:30 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
We made a recent change to allow Shadowform to do more with crits.

Any chance we might see some of that crit love for Affliction Warlocks? =]

We still have quite a few dots that get 0 benefit from crit, or haste for that matter.

Q u o t e:
(We also dropped lock survivability in PvP too.)

Understatement of the millenium. =[

I don't bother with PvP anymore, at all. Literally, I haven't PvP'd in weeks. And there are plenty of other Warlocks who feel the same way. It's just not fun...

[3.0/WotLK] Vux's Affliction Thread - Stay awhile and listen!

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10972108398&sid=1#0

Delmortis

< Ascension >

Jubei'Thos

59. Re: Priest Concerns 11/01/2008 09:56:04 PM PDT

Q u o t e:

We've gone back and forth on Dispersion. At times in beta it was overpowered and we backed off of it. We do think casting out of it would be too powerful. It's supposed to be a defensive ability, not something you do to keep someone from being able to counter you when you're wailing on them.

I think what most Priests would like is to still be able to cast defensive spells while Dispersed. The defensive form of Dispel Magic. Power Word: Shield. Fade. Maybe Psychic Scream. We don't necessarily want to be able to pop Dispersion and be able to keep attacking (like a Rogue does with CloS).
Another thing that's usually asked for is for Dispersion to remove some debuffs. Physical debuffs would seem the most appropriate (what exactly is there to hamstring if you're a cloud of pure shadow energy?) .

Q u o t e:

4) Defensive dispelling (getting a debuff off of you) feels more legitimate than removing someone else's Fort or whatever. We want to try and steer the system towards that.

This of course would effect Affliction Warlocks and Shadow Priests (and possibly Unholy Deathknights I guess) more than other classes as so much of our DPS comes from DoTs. Affliction Warlocks do have a decent protection mechanism in UA.

Q u o t e:

Um, Vampiric Touch does a lot of damage. It's coefficient was doubled and is now almost overpowered. When we noticed Shadow's damage was a little low, we gave a lot of it back just through VT. As far as Replenishment goes, I explained why we tied it into Mindblast elsewhere. It has to do with the cooldown - duration of the spells involved as well as not wanting to lose ticks.

I agree with you here in regards to VT. It does a very nice amount of damage now. The issue with Replenishment however is that it's still a lot more complex than the alternatives. I do get why the proc has to be linked to Mind Blast. I have no real issues with that. The only problem is that in addition to casting that Mind Blast, VT also has to be up on the target. Why not separate that part of VT out from the DoT? Make the Replenishment providing role of VT passive in the VT talent so that just having the talent point is enough to make it proc when you Mind Blast? You have other talents that have both active effects and passive effects.

Q u o t e:

There aren't many things that remove Cyclones, but we'll look into how the bonus to Fade is implemented.

Like some of the concerns with Dispersion, some of the issues with Fade (with Improved Shadowform) is that it seems the snare removal was designed more with a snaring mob in mind than PvP. While grinding and running across a snaring mob it might snare once per fight. You hit Fade, remove the snare and continue on. In PvP, it's so easy for most of the classes that have snares to immediately resnare. Before you've managed to gain any distance at all.

What some of us would like to see is a window of snare immunity. Either for the full duration of the Fade buff being up, or part of it. Currently it would seem that hitting Fade to remove that Crippling poison is just a waste of a GCD and some mana.

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