Of the 3 cloth classes, you have gotten one correct, mages. Mages are designed to kite and escape, and from what I have witnessed and experienced, they are amazing at it now. Kudos on the job well done whoever was designing mages, the plethora of frost nova spam makes it virtually impossible to stick on a mage.

Warlocks are getting better. They have sufficient abilities to tank, namely soul link, metamorphosis, un-purgable armor, etc. In addition, they are also beginning to bridge the gap to the escaping portion via spells like demonic teleport. All in all, I think you have a good direction for warlocks, they have the ability to tank, but if they want they can also escape if it gets really hairy. Just a few tweaks for them and they should be perfect.

On to the last cloth marvel, priests. I just don't undestand how you can develop so many escape and tanking abilities for other clothies, and then leave priests stuck in the mud. Is it your intention that you expect us to heal our way out of every situation? I am just trying to see this from your point of view, what do you give us credit for that I am not seeing that makes us deserve no way to escape, and at the same time be destined to tank everything while also having the worst mana efficiency of any healer, and being the only healer susceptible to viper sting? Please enlighten me.

Do you use a positives and negatives sort of thing when designing? Like for example, priests have a bunch of instant cast spells, so thats a positive, therefore to limit their power they need to be able to be permanently snared or they will just kite while instant healing? Is this the type of logic? Because I am still at a loss why there is no way to escape after 4+ years of being a priest.

I can only imagine that you are dead set on designing priests to be tanking healers. Well, if that is the case, I suggest toss us a bone because we are nowhere near the level of pallies right now in terms of pvp tank healing, not to mention, PALLIES CAN STILL GET AWAY because of divine shield and blessing of freedom, so they actually DONT need to sit there and tank.

Priests have the worst %*%!ing design concept in terms of pvp healing that I am awed that blizzard has not corrected it by now. The only reason I am even viable right now and have decent arena ratings is because 90% of the teams are double dps teams, and the only thing that allows my team to win is because they kill me and then I just heal through spirit of redemption while my death knight partner 2 shots them. As the baddies get weeded out and the true teams emerge, priests will get left in the dust, as all it takes is a healer on the other side and we will undoubtedly die before them.

To add insult to injury, the only thing that keeps me from dieing in 5 seconds instead of 15 is my rocket boots, which I have no doubt you will nerf before long as you did in the past. So in conclusion, WTF bliz?

Expect a "but you canz shadow form and aoe fear" or something along those lines.. IMO priests should wear plate.

Yeah, I undoubtedly believe blizz will nerf rocket boots before fixing the other !#*!. They'll probably nerf spirit of redemption glyph too before even glancing at deadly brew/ non dr silences / non dr polymorph.

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...They'll probably nerf spirit of redemption glyph too...

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No doubt in my mind. They have already nerfed it once, if not twice, since its originial inception in beta. Seeing as it is the only thing making me viable right now, I can definitely see it being nerfed in an upcoming patch, if not hot fixed to a tiny percent.

I don't know what they were thinking exactly. I mean they not only made damage ridiculous, they nerfed focused will and pain suppression, and ffs the brutal gladiator gear has twice the armor that the deadly gladiator gear does for cloth.

Very nice post! This has always amazed me too. To add to the insult, they nerfed our "Tanking" talents Focused Will and Pain Suppression with the release of the expansion.

What needs to be done in my opinion:

1. The mana cost on a great deal of our abilities needs reduced or they need to buff our mana gaining spells/talents like Shadowfiend, Rapture, Serendipity, and of course Hymn of Garbage.

2. Make Divine Hymn actually useful.

3. I think our salvation lies in our good ol' spell Fade. Basically, turn it into a super spell.

a. Give all priests the Fade effect from Improved Shadowform which allows us to remove all snares on us.
b. Allow fade to provide a temporary speed boost.
c. Allow fade to remove poisons. Instead of giving us Abolish Poison or Cure Poison, I would much rather see Priests get a self only poison cure - and it would be perfectly balanced seeing that fade has a 30 sec cooldown.
d. Lastly, if Blizzard wants to get really fancy, allow fade to work like feign death, causing our enemies to lose target of us.

And if that's too many effects in one spell than make the spell Levitate actually useful and not the crap that's gonna happen next patch so that it looks like this:

Fade - 30 sec cooldown
-Drops Threat/Drops Target
-Removes Poisons

Levitate - 30 sec cooldown
-Increases movement speed by X% for 8 sec.
- Remove all snare effects.
-Allows us to walk on water/slow fall

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Q u o t e:
First, I think the warlocks would disagree pretty vehemently about their survivability. This message comes up pretty regularly on the damage forums.

Second, we know it's posible to make very tough priests, because Disc priests were exactly like that in later seasons. It took a high amount of resilience gear and some specific talent choices, but they could take a lot of damage and heal themselves through a certain amount of it.

I agree we have some work to do on Holy priests in PvP.

I think the concept of a cloth class without a lot of mobiliy that is supposed to just heal itself through damage would be a pretty hard sell. But we try to address it on the mitigation side for priests (and the occasional fear bomb doesn't hurt).

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Indeed, warlock survivability is poor.

However holy priest survivability is entirely superior to that of disc, so I'm surprised you would say that. Blessed resilience provides superior survivability to everything disc has to offer as self-defenses. Once the burst subsides slightly (or so I hope, considering pyroblast crits for 8000+ with over 700 resilience), our other fundamental flaws will become more apparent, but if what you're aiming to address is survivability then I'm amazed that you'd overlook disc as requiring attention.

As you said, we ARE a cloth class without a lot of mobility (we are, in fact, the least mobile class in the game) - so why is it that focused will was nerfed? I presume it had something to do with the implimentation of grace, but grace is really something for OTHER people considering its extremely short duration, and the fact that the best spell for applying it cant be used on ourselves.

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(and the occasional fear bomb doesn't hurt).

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Oh you went there GC.

not to mention getting locked out of our tree in order to apply it with a 1.5 that can be interrupted many ways.

Resilience gear is very hard to earn when you're in the graveyard during most of your BGs because everyone loves to focus you.

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(and the occasional fear bomb doesn't hurt).

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but then how can we divine hymn lololol

I'm quoting this from Howard of Black Dragon from another thread, because I think it's highly relevant

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I see where you're coming from, and I feel the way you do. If anybody loves PvP on a Priest, its me. I've been Glad multiple seasons, FM pre-BC, trust me...I LOVE PVP.

[quote]See, the thread itself has kinda been de-railed, and people are bumping for blue response...I would bet the farm that Ghostcrawler has read this thread, probably several times. I will also bet the farm he has no idea what they're going to do about it, hence why he doesn't post.

I am itching to get into the Arena, but not in my current state. I am also itching for a sign of good news and maybe 3.1 will deliver on that. I highly doubt that will be the case either.

The problem with healers is more complex than "we have no mobility" or "melee kills us in two seconds"....it might seem like those would be quick fixes to the issues, but if those were to get fixed, then there could be bads that are Priests and get by (like there were Druids). Right now, from a DPS standpoint I THINK things are half way decent, cause all of them are OP in their own respect.

Healers across the board are fairly weak at the moment (and yes, Priests might be the weakest of the bunch)...but I can assure the problems are more complex than just band-aid fixes as to what currently plagues us. I'll give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt with it, but I will probably get my rogue to 80 and play that until they get healing working the way that it needs to be.

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The issue itself doesn't require the band-aid fixes that a lot of people are suggesting, because in the end it will just dumb down the experience. A lot of the issues are:

"We have no mobility"

or

"I get two shot even with 500 resilience"

or

"I run out of mana too fast"

They are all valid concerns, and fixing all these problems will take a lot of work. The first two are certainly two of the more pressing issues for sure. I still believe that the fade change that you saw in Shadow being baseline would be a huge change as far as helping peel for Priests. Making our level 80 talent Rocket Boots instead of the craptacular Divine Hymn (which is a problem for another thread entirely) would have gone a longer way, which means in some cases abilities need to be looked at as well..

As far as getting two shot...what really is the root cause of the issue. Is it lack of HP/Stamina? Is it lack of Resilience (no)? Is it lack of armor on gear? Is it a lack of talents even (partially)? These are the things that we have to take a look at. I'll be the first to say, if you are caught in a bad position, with like no Renew, Shield, PoM or whatever on you...yes, you should be in a position where if you are out of CD's, you should be killed, not where we are now where even with CD's you still die.

All of the things that I mentioned above were certainly issues in my opinion. As I have stated earlier in this thread, there is no reason why our class should be tied down to resilience in order to compete. That is bad game design because then the developers are relying on a stat to balance talents/abilities that are clearly not doing what they need to be doing. That is the main issue here...personally I am tired of little band-aid fixes that Priests have been getting, only to come back to the same issues we've been having in PvP since pre-BC. They have to get to the root cause, the concerns I listed above are the main concerns of Priests, and there is no reason why they shouldn't have been addressed, especially heading into the 2nd expansion here.

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Q u o t e:
First, I think the warlocks would disagree pretty vehemently about their survivability. This message comes up pretty regularly on the damage forums.

Second, we know it's posible to make very tough priests, because Disc priests were exactly like that in later seasons. It took a high amount of resilience gear and some specific talent choices, but they could take a lot of damage and heal themselves through a certain amount of it.

I agree we have some work to do on Holy priests in PvP.

I think the concept of a cloth class without a lot of mobiliy that is supposed to just heal itself through damage would be a pretty hard sell. But we try to address it on the mitigation side for priests (and the occasional fear bomb doesn't hurt).

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This is the opposite of true. Holy tanks much better in pvp -Battlegrounds, duels, every arena bracket.

Having palyed disc, holy, and hybrids of the two extensively since the release of s5 i can say beyond a doubt that you are entirely wrong in what is undoubtedly an ASSUMPTION. So so so so so so very wrong.

This blue post has deeply concerned me, are you really this unaware of our situation?

EDIT: removed nerd rage

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No need to insult him Seu, by Holy I'm pretty sure he meant "Healing" Priests.

Also known as Holy and Discipline.

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holy is one of our trees. haha im sorry i just finished playing 20 games of warrior priest as disc, then another 20 as holy. Its the most frusturating comp in the game right now and my experience is the exact opposite of what he proposes, you would be tearing your hair out after fighting mage rogue mirrors in ring of valor with poly gyph too.

Holy survives well, disc puts out pressure and is tons of fun to play but i cant click lightwell through stuns, proc BR, and go SoR and fish for glyph procs. got 3 minutes of sor healing one game


On a side note using divine hymn as the gates drop is pretty lulzy.

Cloth tank PvP concept works as long as the cloth tanks have enough durability and enough castability.

And all they have to do is change some numbers to make that happen.

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It was a quote from Audrie of Black Dragonflight! YEEAAAA!!!!

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And you put it very well <3

No need to insult him Seu, by Holy I'm pretty sure he meant "Healing" Priests.

Also known as Holy and Discipline.

What I would love GC to comment on is Priests and Poisons. Please.

Are hunters really supposed to drain all our mana without us being unable to do anything? At least when I'm trying to mana burn someone, I can be interrupted, silenced, and CCed. Viper Sting is instant and unavoidable.

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Q u o t e:
First, I think the warlocks would disagree pretty vehemently about their survivability. This message comes up pretty regularly on the damage forums.

Second, we know it's posible to make very tough priests, because Disc priests were exactly like that in later seasons. It took a high amount of resilience gear and some specific talent choices, but they could take a lot of damage and heal themselves through a certain amount of it.

I agree we have some work to do on Holy priests in PvP.

I think the concept of a cloth class without a lot of mobiliy that is supposed to just heal itself through damage would be a pretty hard sell. But we try to address it on the mitigation side for priests (and the occasional fear bomb doesn't hurt).

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This is sort of odd to me. Originally (in BC, when the first major changes got made to disc), I recall holy was supposed to be our PvE healing tree, Disc was supposed to be our survivability tree, and shadow was supposed to be our DPS tree.

As I see it, now we have 2 PvE healing trees and one DPS tree, with some survivability talents sort of peppered around. In order to mitigate enough crits to be viable even at high resillence now (compared to other players currently), we have to spec halfway in to 2 trees. Notably, warlocks have (had? My warlock isn't 80 yet) this same problem with the old SL/SL spec. They couldn't get end tree talents without severely hampering their survivability. Every other class seems to be able to.

I have several friends who play warlocks, they would support your assertion that even with a variation of the SL/SL spec for level 80, warlocks are as broken as priests are in terms of survivability.

As for priest mitigation, as it has been stated time and time again, it's not sufficient. I apologise for sounding like a broken record played by so many who came before me, but your answers sometimes make me feel that you don't share our sentiment.

My question, would be this: If we want to have an amazing single target healer spec, why can't it be a part of holy, so we can have the disc tree for PvP?

May I remind you GC that disc priests and SL locks were one of the most boring specs to play gameplay wise because you sacrifice other skills to not die, and mages themselves would be cooked if it weren't for the overpowered 30 second hypothermia. It's about time that armor was looked at again from a gameplay standpoint including pve. Look at it this way, it's FUN when a mob is attacking you, it gives you a certain thrill than just sitting back and spamming fireballs. However, it's not fun to get 2 shot when that mob is attacking you. The same applies to pvp. What all casters need is more BASE LINE skills that give them the basics to survive and talents help augment that. Having a "focused will" for each tree is kinda cheesy. Then having to add on a spell warding, blessed recovery, and needing to go down to meditation, you're pretty much left with nothing to help you to actually heal.

To contrast, take a look at the paladin, how many holy pvp paladins do you know actually GET blessed life despite it being a really good talent.