It's funny how they reduce the cooldown on all silences except ours. It's like we don't really have one.
Silence is not as good as an interrupt. With the casting bar in the Blizzard UI, even a really tired gold farmer can interrupt your heal. Unless... your silence is tied to a global cooldown.
I don't care if you're Spider-man, you will not silence that heal if you have to wait for the global cooldown. Spider-sense is tingling? Sure, but then you gotta wait 1.5 seconds.
So you're like, what about kick? Well, kick and pummel is up every 10 seconds, and rogues have a 1.0 second Global cooldown, because they're special. And warriors, well, you've seen how much they complain about people casting stuff on them.
To make things worse, you can't really silence anyone in PVE. I think I've silenced an ethereal priest in mana-tombs once, but that's probably because he was a priest. But those channelers in Magtheridon's Lair? Those guys are like warlocks. They throw shadowbolts and just refuse to shut the hell up.
But I'm okay with that, Silence is a pvp talent, right?
Now, people don't notice this because they're busy fleeing for their lives, but if you check the Thottbot page on Spell Lock, you'll notice that it says, "Dispel Type: None". If you look up Silence, it says, "Dispel Type: Magic". I silence priests alot and it gets dispelled by their friendly pallys, or vice versa. Felhunter silence? Not dispellable. Well, wait a minute here... Why is a pet spell better than my 21 point talent? So I break out my warlock twink (shhh, don't tell anyone) and sure enough, Spell Lock has a red border and is not a magical effect.
GD It!
Sunday, May 20, 2007
On Fear
There was never really a problem with priest fear. Err, wait. Allow me to rephrase that -- there was never really a problem with alliance priest's fear.
And now there is.
Fear should not break before some mouse-clicking rogue finds his 'WotF' key. This *ACTUALLY* happened. It was on the PTR and I dot'd the guy and feared him and it broke before he finally found his WotF. Like a couple seconds after the fear broke he finally goes, Psssh! -- Will of the Forsaken noise -- and keyboard turns slowly, tosses a shuriken at me with deadly throw and starts whaling on me with this hammer. Man, it's like watching a retard play.
But first, let's get something straight. I don't have a barrage of fears, and I don't wear plate and charge into a group of people with an undispellable fear. When you get feared for 12 seconds, and then feared AGAIN, and then horrified, and then die a terrible death... that ain't me. That's some dude that actually deserves his nerf.
I only have cloth and a single fear to keep people at arm's length. Hell, even fire mages have blazing speed. Who the hell let those those book-burrowing geeks turn into track stars? Don't even get me started on frost mages with their fancy little frost shields vs. melee.
So. Fear.
Priests need something else.
And now there is.
Fear should not break before some mouse-clicking rogue finds his 'WotF' key. This *ACTUALLY* happened. It was on the PTR and I dot'd the guy and feared him and it broke before he finally found his WotF. Like a couple seconds after the fear broke he finally goes, Psssh! -- Will of the Forsaken noise -- and keyboard turns slowly, tosses a shuriken at me with deadly throw and starts whaling on me with this hammer. Man, it's like watching a retard play.
But first, let's get something straight. I don't have a barrage of fears, and I don't wear plate and charge into a group of people with an undispellable fear. When you get feared for 12 seconds, and then feared AGAIN, and then horrified, and then die a terrible death... that ain't me. That's some dude that actually deserves his nerf.
I only have cloth and a single fear to keep people at arm's length. Hell, even fire mages have blazing speed. Who the hell let those those book-burrowing geeks turn into track stars? Don't even get me started on frost mages with their fancy little frost shields vs. melee.
So. Fear.
Priests need something else.
On Vampiric Embrace
Now that spiritual attunement has been 'fixed', Vampiric Embrace needs to be returned to its former glory. That is the simple truth of the matter.
Notice that VE has been crit-healing for years and nobody really cared until spiritual attunement came along. Now all of a sudden, it's 'omigah it crits' and 'omigah its 35%'. And as you know, when there's two parties involved, always nerf priests. Spiritual attunement and Vampiric Touch having synergy? Nerf VE! Warlocks doing too much damage with shadow weaving? Nerf Shadow weaving! If circle of healing ever works with some other class? Nerf circle of healing!
Even reverted to its original state, VE is still worse than it used to be. The silent resolve nerf (part of which I personally agree with) has completely unraveled VE in terms of aggro. Now, no, we shouldn't have 50% aggro reduction on shadow spells. But VE shouldn't make us aggro magnets either. The fact is, alot of raiding priests are dropping the 2 points in improved VE because it simply generates too much unnecessary aggro.
This would be okay if it didn't affect pvp shadow priests. But it does. Because you see, in pvp, things tend to go like this:
If you can't heal, you can run. And if you can't do either of those, you can smash face. Some people, like paladins, can heal and run around with freedom on, so I guess it's no real surprise that they tend to hang out with people who smash faces.
Well, Priests can't run, and we don't really smash more faces compared to anyone else. Shadow priests can't heal, except for VE. And now you nerfed our VE.
The suggestions:
1. Restore VE to its original 25% base, +10% improved. It's all meaningless overheal now, anyway.
2. Restore VE to its original 25% base, and 2 points of Improved VE to reduce healing aggro caused by
VE. That way PVP players can save 2 points, and PVE priests can actually use the spell.
Notice that VE has been crit-healing for years and nobody really cared until spiritual attunement came along. Now all of a sudden, it's 'omigah it crits' and 'omigah its 35%'. And as you know, when there's two parties involved, always nerf priests. Spiritual attunement and Vampiric Touch having synergy? Nerf VE! Warlocks doing too much damage with shadow weaving? Nerf Shadow weaving! If circle of healing ever works with some other class? Nerf circle of healing!
Even reverted to its original state, VE is still worse than it used to be. The silent resolve nerf (part of which I personally agree with) has completely unraveled VE in terms of aggro. Now, no, we shouldn't have 50% aggro reduction on shadow spells. But VE shouldn't make us aggro magnets either. The fact is, alot of raiding priests are dropping the 2 points in improved VE because it simply generates too much unnecessary aggro.
This would be okay if it didn't affect pvp shadow priests. But it does. Because you see, in pvp, things tend to go like this:
If you can't heal, you can run. And if you can't do either of those, you can smash face. Some people, like paladins, can heal and run around with freedom on, so I guess it's no real surprise that they tend to hang out with people who smash faces.
Well, Priests can't run, and we don't really smash more faces compared to anyone else. Shadow priests can't heal, except for VE. And now you nerfed our VE.
The suggestions:
1. Restore VE to its original 25% base, +10% improved. It's all meaningless overheal now, anyway.
2. Restore VE to its original 25% base, and 2 points of Improved VE to reduce healing aggro caused by
VE. That way PVP players can save 2 points, and PVE priests can actually use the spell.
Improved Mindblast
Let's start with a brief history lesson.
Mindblast used to be instant. It was once the priest version of fireblast, or a shock type spell, and was given a cooldown accordingly. As it so happened, you used to be able to channel mindflay while running (imagine that), so a priest would never have to stop to cast. And that was overpowered.
So mindblast was given a 1.5 second cast time, but the cooldown was never fixed (mindflay was also changed to what it is today). Mindblast then became the priest version of lightning bolt, and priests never had an instant nuke again until SW:Death. And that's the end of that story.
Now, here's the issue: basic damage spells of this type are not supposed to have cooldowns. Lightning bolt is spammable, and so is scorch, searing pain, fireball, and shadowbolt. Mindblast having a cooldown is really a result of its legacy as an instant spell.
Furthermore, mindblast is the worst of its category in terms of scaling. Because 1.5 second spells share the coefficients with instant cast spells, so mindblast scales like fireblast and shock spells (42.9% according to Nightshroud's Lux et Umbra). It is also the only non-instant direct damage spell to have a cooldown, so shadow priests are really getting the short end of the stick here.
But wait, what about the 2.0 second lightning bolts or 1.5 second chain lightning? The simple answer is that these spells can be talented to cast like mindblast but retain their base spell coefficients as 3.0 second and 2.5 second spells, respectively. Even immolate, shadowbolt, fireball, and frostbolt can have their cast times reduced similarly (none of those spells have cooldowns).
The suggestions:
1. Improved mindblast makes mindblast instant. The damage coefficients stay the same anyway. Unlike
chain lightning or lightning bolt, we do not get any scaling benefits from it.
2. Improved mindblast reduces mindblast cooldown significantly. Now it's like every other nuke in the game, except it scales less with gear.
3. Improved mindblast reduces cooldown of both Mindblast and SW:D by small amount. Let's be honest: 12 seconds is too much in pvp.
A quick aside on the SW:Death vs. Shadowburn debate:
The notion that the two are comparable is ridiculous. Locks have so many spells that shadowburn is just icing on the cake. If locks want to try it out for themselves, then remove shadowbolt, incinerate, soulfire and immolate from your spellbooks. You should be left with only searing pain except it has an 8 second cooldown, and you must restrict yourself to two dots. Then, you have your beloved shadowburn, except it does blowback damage and a 12 second cooldown. So the rest of the time you just have to channel drain life except you don't have fel concentration and it only heals for 25%, assuming you have 3 points in vampiric embrace. Oh, and no fear except improved howl of terror, and absolutely no deathcoil. And... no pets and replace your lifetap button with a super mana potion, at 5g a pop.
Welcome to the priesthood. Enjoy.
Mindblast used to be instant. It was once the priest version of fireblast, or a shock type spell, and was given a cooldown accordingly. As it so happened, you used to be able to channel mindflay while running (imagine that), so a priest would never have to stop to cast. And that was overpowered.
So mindblast was given a 1.5 second cast time, but the cooldown was never fixed (mindflay was also changed to what it is today). Mindblast then became the priest version of lightning bolt, and priests never had an instant nuke again until SW:Death. And that's the end of that story.
Now, here's the issue: basic damage spells of this type are not supposed to have cooldowns. Lightning bolt is spammable, and so is scorch, searing pain, fireball, and shadowbolt. Mindblast having a cooldown is really a result of its legacy as an instant spell.
Furthermore, mindblast is the worst of its category in terms of scaling. Because 1.5 second spells share the coefficients with instant cast spells, so mindblast scales like fireblast and shock spells (42.9% according to Nightshroud's Lux et Umbra). It is also the only non-instant direct damage spell to have a cooldown, so shadow priests are really getting the short end of the stick here.
But wait, what about the 2.0 second lightning bolts or 1.5 second chain lightning? The simple answer is that these spells can be talented to cast like mindblast but retain their base spell coefficients as 3.0 second and 2.5 second spells, respectively. Even immolate, shadowbolt, fireball, and frostbolt can have their cast times reduced similarly (none of those spells have cooldowns).
The suggestions:
1. Improved mindblast makes mindblast instant. The damage coefficients stay the same anyway. Unlike
chain lightning or lightning bolt, we do not get any scaling benefits from it.
2. Improved mindblast reduces mindblast cooldown significantly. Now it's like every other nuke in the game, except it scales less with gear.
3. Improved mindblast reduces cooldown of both Mindblast and SW:D by small amount. Let's be honest: 12 seconds is too much in pvp.
A quick aside on the SW:Death vs. Shadowburn debate:
The notion that the two are comparable is ridiculous. Locks have so many spells that shadowburn is just icing on the cake. If locks want to try it out for themselves, then remove shadowbolt, incinerate, soulfire and immolate from your spellbooks. You should be left with only searing pain except it has an 8 second cooldown, and you must restrict yourself to two dots. Then, you have your beloved shadowburn, except it does blowback damage and a 12 second cooldown. So the rest of the time you just have to channel drain life except you don't have fel concentration and it only heals for 25%, assuming you have 3 points in vampiric embrace. Oh, and no fear except improved howl of terror, and absolutely no deathcoil. And... no pets and replace your lifetap button with a super mana potion, at 5g a pop.
Welcome to the priesthood. Enjoy.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
"Priests have the most versatile heals!"
Everyone says we have the most multi-target heals in the game. To this I plead no contest. We have Holy Nova, Prayer of Healing, Binding Heal, and Circle of Healing.
The catch -- and there is always a catch -- is that all of these spells could just be called 'Prayer of Healing'.
Although...
I suppose that if there were a bunch of enemies and all five members of my party were clumped together within a 10 yard radius and I just happend to be standing right in the middle of all of them, Holy Nova would really, really rock some socks.
...And if it just so happened that a player 40 yards away from me were grouped with everyone within 15 yards of him and they were all taking tiny bits of steady, non-burst damage, I would be immensely glad that I spent 41 points on Circle of Healing.
...And just in case my target and I, but nobody else around us, direly needed simultaneous flash heals, it would be a wonderful moment for me and I would also like to thank the academy, and the developers that thought of a spell like Binding Heal.
But for every thing else, there's Greater Heal (or Holy Light).
The catch -- and there is always a catch -- is that all of these spells could just be called 'Prayer of Healing'.
Although...
I suppose that if there were a bunch of enemies and all five members of my party were clumped together within a 10 yard radius and I just happend to be standing right in the middle of all of them, Holy Nova would really, really rock some socks.
...And if it just so happened that a player 40 yards away from me were grouped with everyone within 15 yards of him and they were all taking tiny bits of steady, non-burst damage, I would be immensely glad that I spent 41 points on Circle of Healing.
...And just in case my target and I, but nobody else around us, direly needed simultaneous flash heals, it would be a wonderful moment for me and I would also like to thank the academy, and the developers that thought of a spell like Binding Heal.
But for every thing else, there's Greater Heal (or Holy Light).
Unstable Affliction, Mortal Strike, Lifebloom and You
I hate Unstable Affliction. The ability itself isn't bad, but it's the idea behind it.
And the idea behind it is that a bunch of developers were pissed about people owning Chromaggus with decursive and decided to mete out some whoop-ass like only a bunch of developers can. So not only does this warlock spell do more damage than Chromaggus, it also silences you for 5 seconds too. How much coding was involved in doing all that anyway? More than putting the priest gladiator helm and shoulders into the game, I bet.
But meanwhile, somewhere else in HQ, another bunch of developers were busy dismantling decursive as an add-on, so the dispelling problem wouldn't have been as bad anyway. Double nerfed!
But I find it ironic that the justification for UA is that dispel is the bane of the affliction tree, and to make it more pleasant for those guys with instant howl of terror, UA would now be the bane of all dispellers instead. Ha, the tables have turned, priests! Now you can feel the futility of Pre-2.0 affliction warlocks! Yes, yes, we know. Mortal Strike has been cutting the effectiveness of our healing by half since the dawn of the World... of Warcraft. And that's unfair -- because rogues didn't have it too. That travesty has since been amended in Burning Crusade, and we sincerely apologize to all rogues for the inconvenience. Please accept these Cloaks of shadow as a token of gratitude for your continued support!
As for getting your stuff dispelled, well, shamans have been doing that to us ever since the first warrior Mortal Struck a priest and owned him. Yeah, we get it. So how about we have something where, if it gets purged, totally owns the purger?!
Oh, lifebloom, right.
Now there is also the case of those dirty, spell-stealing mages. But whatever, go ahead and steal those 5 charges of Inner Fire! If that's not sloppy seconds, I don't know what is.
And the idea behind it is that a bunch of developers were pissed about people owning Chromaggus with decursive and decided to mete out some whoop-ass like only a bunch of developers can. So not only does this warlock spell do more damage than Chromaggus, it also silences you for 5 seconds too. How much coding was involved in doing all that anyway? More than putting the priest gladiator helm and shoulders into the game, I bet.
But meanwhile, somewhere else in HQ, another bunch of developers were busy dismantling decursive as an add-on, so the dispelling problem wouldn't have been as bad anyway. Double nerfed!
But I find it ironic that the justification for UA is that dispel is the bane of the affliction tree, and to make it more pleasant for those guys with instant howl of terror, UA would now be the bane of all dispellers instead. Ha, the tables have turned, priests! Now you can feel the futility of Pre-2.0 affliction warlocks! Yes, yes, we know. Mortal Strike has been cutting the effectiveness of our healing by half since the dawn of the World... of Warcraft. And that's unfair -- because rogues didn't have it too. That travesty has since been amended in Burning Crusade, and we sincerely apologize to all rogues for the inconvenience. Please accept these Cloaks of shadow as a token of gratitude for your continued support!
As for getting your stuff dispelled, well, shamans have been doing that to us ever since the first warrior Mortal Struck a priest and owned him. Yeah, we get it. So how about we have something where, if it gets purged, totally owns the purger?!
Oh, lifebloom, right.
Now there is also the case of those dirty, spell-stealing mages. But whatever, go ahead and steal those 5 charges of Inner Fire! If that's not sloppy seconds, I don't know what is.
Inner Fire Sucks
I once took a 2000 mainhand mutilate crit. True story. I'll never know how much the offhand would've done because it never landed. I died faster than he could move his other hand.
In retrospect, the number is slightly skewed because my inner fire wore off during his kidney shot, and the kidney shot was probably improved (9% more damage), but still.
That alone is one of my issues with inner fire. It is the only buff in the game that wears off when you really need it. It's like, you're getting hit very hard and very fast, your raid leader is yelling for more dots, and Boom! Your protection fades from you. Ridiculous. What's a priest gotta do to get some reliable protection around here?
This is probably redundant but I think this is a fair analogy: having inner fire is like going into a big bar fight with a night elf rogue for backup, because you know those pointy-eared cowards are going to vanish once the taurens get drunk. You'd be like, Hey, Legollas, get the guy who's punching me in the -- Poof! Gone.
The rest of the time inner fire just sort of sticks around. Like when you're sitting in Shattrath and it's physically impossible to get ganked, inner fire will stay with you for... 10 minutes. Now, mage armor will regen your mana while casting for 30 minutes, fel armor will increase your healing effects and spell damage for 30 minutes, but inner fire will give you some unreliable armor for... 10 minutes.
In retrospect, the number is slightly skewed because my inner fire wore off during his kidney shot, and the kidney shot was probably improved (9% more damage), but still.
That alone is one of my issues with inner fire. It is the only buff in the game that wears off when you really need it. It's like, you're getting hit very hard and very fast, your raid leader is yelling for more dots, and Boom! Your protection fades from you. Ridiculous. What's a priest gotta do to get some reliable protection around here?
This is probably redundant but I think this is a fair analogy: having inner fire is like going into a big bar fight with a night elf rogue for backup, because you know those pointy-eared cowards are going to vanish once the taurens get drunk. You'd be like, Hey, Legollas, get the guy who's punching me in the -- Poof! Gone.
The rest of the time inner fire just sort of sticks around. Like when you're sitting in Shattrath and it's physically impossible to get ganked, inner fire will stay with you for... 10 minutes. Now, mage armor will regen your mana while casting for 30 minutes, fel armor will increase your healing effects and spell damage for 30 minutes, but inner fire will give you some unreliable armor for... 10 minutes.
Priests in Plate
It always amuses me to see plate classes whine about caster damage.
"Zee armor does nothing!" they say.
Or sometimes, "Frostbolt for 2k! ... ON PLATE! Ridiculous!"
But what these people never mention is how much physical damage plate armor and shields mitigate. Sure, half the time you're getting reamed by frostbolts, but the other half of the time, you're mitigating approximately half the damage. I suppose I could let you guys in on a little secret: cloth gets owned by spell damage too. Did you think Pyroblasts did extra damage on warriors or something? Because that would be sooo unfair.
The fact is, cloth takes so much damage from everything that priests have to stack massive hitpoints and resilience (at the cost of other stats) to have a chance at surviving the melee damage that Paladins oh-so-casually mitigate. It's become so natural to Pallys that they sort of take it for granted. And every now and then, one of them will scream:
"By the Might of Menethil! A backstab crit for 1000 damage!"
Oh really? That's incredibly low. One time I was minding my own business at the corner of Telhamat and Honor Hold when I took a stray multi-shot to the face for 2300 damage. Guy wasn't even gunning for me, some Orc fella. Big shoulders.
"Zounds!" They say, "2000 damage! Only mages and locks hit me that hard!"
I know, Timmy, I know.
"Zee armor does nothing!" they say.
Or sometimes, "Frostbolt for 2k! ... ON PLATE! Ridiculous!"
But what these people never mention is how much physical damage plate armor and shields mitigate. Sure, half the time you're getting reamed by frostbolts, but the other half of the time, you're mitigating approximately half the damage. I suppose I could let you guys in on a little secret: cloth gets owned by spell damage too. Did you think Pyroblasts did extra damage on warriors or something? Because that would be sooo unfair.
The fact is, cloth takes so much damage from everything that priests have to stack massive hitpoints and resilience (at the cost of other stats) to have a chance at surviving the melee damage that Paladins oh-so-casually mitigate. It's become so natural to Pallys that they sort of take it for granted. And every now and then, one of them will scream:
"By the Might of Menethil! A backstab crit for 1000 damage!"
Oh really? That's incredibly low. One time I was minding my own business at the corner of Telhamat and Honor Hold when I took a stray multi-shot to the face for 2300 damage. Guy wasn't even gunning for me, some Orc fella. Big shoulders.
"Zounds!" They say, "2000 damage! Only mages and locks hit me that hard!"
I know, Timmy, I know.
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