Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Cataclysm, the 3rd Word of Warcraft expansion is on its way.  When it will be here exactly no one can say, but most accounts put it early second quarter of next year.  There is a lot of exciting things in this expansion.  Most information we know came out of Blizzcon, and very little of it was class specific.  We know there will be great changes to the old world as the cataclysm causes widespread destruction in Azeroth.  We know that they are getting rid of some stats, like Spellpower (now based off int), Defense, Armor Penetration and MP5 (regen from spirit only).  We know they are redoing the talent system, removing percent based talents, and adding in talent mastery which has a new stat attributed to it.  Finally we know they are adding a new character customization system called Path of the Titans, which will be sort of like AA’s in EQ but not grindy, more on a time based progression.

Above here you will see my current spec.  I’d like to go over a few of my hopes for Discipline in Cataclysm and what changes we might expect.  First, I love Discipline as you all know.  After floundering for years on Disc, they finally settled on it being a Healing tree, with a focus on damage prevention/mitigation instead of more healing.  Holy does fine on the healing end, and to have two trees for healing, they really need to be different ways of doing the same job.  I think they hit the nail on the head with 3.0.  We have had what you might say a few setbacks in some of the changes, but none of them have been devastating to me, I still enjoy the spec.  So for Cataclysm I hope we can progress even more forward with the prevention/mitigation with the spec.

There are two new mechanics to the redesign of the talent system.  One is the removal of percentage based talents, which will be something you get automatically as you add points in a tree.  The other is the idea of Mastery, which is something your spec is meant to be good at.  They are adding a stat that allows your Mastery ability to increase.  This stat will be cool because you could have a piece of gear that might be good for a healer or DPS, that has this stat and it will do something different for whomever is wearing it.  They also said they were going to split up talents that too many things stacked together, an example of this right now is probably Renewed Hope, it is both a talent that gives extra crit to spells on people with weakened soul, and makes it so your raid gets 3% less damage for 20 seconds when you cast PW:Shield.  I imagine those will be split.

Of the talents that will be removed or altered in Disc I imagine it will be Twin Discipline, Meditation, Improved PW:Shield, Mental Agility, Mental Strength, Enlightenment, and Focused Power.  I’m curious about Twin Discipline and Mental Agility, because while they are straight percentage talents, they are very specific to Instant spells.  I’m hoping that Disc maintains its larger mana pool over Holy with Mental Strength which would be built into the tree.  The changes to spell power and Mental Strength would finally make Disc scale a bit better which is the main complaint of the Disc haters.

Now as they remove talents and they said they wanted to add more fun, interesting talents to replace them.  Also the splitting of the talents up will help as well.  This should let you create more interesting custom builds.  One of the ideas that came from Blizzard that got a lot of people excited was Power Word: Barrier.   I know a lot of people want this idea to just go away, but given the upcoming changes I think this is the perfect time to add a new iconic, deep Disc spell.  I think the original idea for PW:Barrier was was a spell that through a PW:Shield on everyone.  I wanted something different, then eventually we got Soul Warding which made that moot anyways.  Now what I wanted from PW:Barrier was some giant bubble shield.  What I later settled on the best idea was to have a huge bubble you placed on the ground that would dampen AOE effects.  After finally experiencing EoE pictured in the above screenshot is similar to something I’d like for Disc.  So the spell would have a radical similar to Mass dispel that let you place the shield, it would remain in that location for a fixed time and say reduce all AOE effects to everyone in the bubble by 75%.  You could even have the bubble shrink out of existence like it does in EoE.  Put an appropriate cooldown, and mana cost on it and we would have a fun interesting spell that would give a new mechanic for raid leaders to play with

If I could have them rethink any existing talent in Disc I would go with Grace.  My main problem with Grace is that it is not controllable at all by me.  If I am tank healing but need to save someone quick with Penance, which is awesome for that I have to remove grace from my tank and then get it back on when I can again. I would prefer Grace to be just a single target buff that we can place on one person of our choosing.  Plus I always had a problem with the duration, so having a longer duration on that buff would be great as well.  The reason being is it only gets applied with a few spells, I like to use all my spells not just the they put on Grace. That simple change would please me greatly.

I have a lot more to add about Disc in Cataclysm, but I believe I will save it for another post.  I think for me it is just key that they continue to stick with the current themes of Disc.  I want to keep my larger mana pool, extra speed (haste,pi,fast heals), and damage absorption/mitigation.

In a random thought this morning that formed into this post on the healing forums I got to thinking more in depth about Power Word: Barrier and what it may mean for us.  The Priest preview was very light on details which when I really got to thinking about it let my mind run wild on the subject.  Lets see exactly what they said:

“Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).”

Ok what might quickly come to mind is you cast a spell that instantly put a Shield on everyone in your group.  Sure this is the easy answer and probably likely the way Blizzard went.  Is it raid capable?  Well it says “for your whole group” this might make you think it is group only but there is no reason to think it couldn’t also effect raid targets.  Lets say you went for the easy pick, it could very well work like Prayer of Healing will in 3.1 which allows you to cast it on a group. So everyone in the group of a your target in a certain number of yards gets a shield.

Now that we took the easy idea out of the picture lets go with some more interesting ones.  One of my first thoughts when I went further is what about a giant bubble that covered everyone!  This in my mind might be similar to Anti-Magic Zone.  This could be interesting, if they made it absorb a lot of damage, it could be useful in a lot of situations, though it requires people to be in your general area.

So you could take it further, what if you could create that bubble where you wanted, like a Blizzard Radial that you choose to create the damage absorbing bubble over people.  This is where I could see it would be useful in a raid situation.  It is unlikely they are thinking of this, because this would be sort of bubbling an area, not a group unless a group of people were under it.  Regardless it is a neat idea to think about.

I’m sure there are other ideas but these are the ones that spring to my mind how it might be implemented.  Then there is the whole question of which graphic would it use.  I’d hope for a DA like graphic, or if we go for a grander shield idea like anti-magic zone   Like in my post I’d hope for 3.1 to get rid of the old PW:Shield graphic and replace with DA’s bubble just a different hue.

Then we have the whole question of cooldowns, cast times, duration, and if Rapture will effect it.  I am hoping for it to be a separate thing and not proc weakened soul, and instead have its own cooldown.  I’m guessing it might have a cooldown, I’m ok with that if they make it sufficiently powerful   I don’t want to spam a group shield anyways.  It might not have a cooldown if it was more of the giant bubble idea because that would be more situational.  I’m going to guess it won’t have a cast time but that is just a guess, again if it doesn’t I’m sure it will have a cooldown.

In the simpleist form not thinking giant bubbles here I’d say it’d probably last the same 30 seconds as PW:Shield.  If it is something else it could be a different duration.  If I would try to guess I might guess shorter but it is hard to say.

The question of Rapture, I’m going to go with yes.  The other two shields support it so I’m sure the group version will.  It would be a crap shoot if all the damage is absorbed on each person in the simple case, or if the giant bubble would be used to its fullest potential.  So if we do get more absorption it will just mean more efficiency of the spell is all.

So lots to think about with this spell.  It will be very exciting and I look forward to seeing it on the PTR.  Even if they went with the most obvious route it will be a fun spell to have in the Discipline arsenal.

I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers or that I know what is really balanced.  I think I’ve been a Priest long enough though to have some good ideas on the direction the class can go.

I’m talking specifically at the Discipline tree here now.  I think the latest overhaul of Disc with 3.0 was good.  I was glad to be a part of beta to provide my feedback and testing.  In the mad rush to launch date though I believe some much needed tweaking was still necessary.

Even more so now that we have had some significant time to test it on the live servers it is clear that some more work needs to be done and I think Blizzard sees this.  Again this isn’t a QQ just some ideas to toss out as Blizzard is working on 3.1.  People like to do lists so here is mine.

1. Limitations! If you look at the talents in Discipline you’ll notice a few things, for one there are a lot of them, and two there are a lot of limitations.  A common one is limited to “Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance”.  I think this is entirely unecessary and completely discourages the use of our other healing spells. Perhaps it is a balancing thing but it seems that it is believed the over all Disc is weak, so perhaps something could be done about this?
2. Crit! Holy Priests will also note the issue with this but given the itemization as such we still need to have some haste, mana regen, and crit.  Getting crit has been really hard so far in gear, and since a Priests needs several things it is hard to stack.  A good idea which I have heard before is to give us crit for Spirit.  Whether this is added onto an existing talent or a new one is created I don’t know.
3. CoolDowns! PW:Shield has always had two cooldowns essentially.  One is a spell cooldown and the other is a target cooldown.  You can only cast the shield once every 4 seconds, and only once every 15 seconds on a particular target.  I continue to believe as I always have that both of those are not necessary.  I would prefer to see the spell cooldown removed so that the spell is more available for others.  I also like the idea of turning the “negative” of weakened soul into a positive such as the attempt with Renewed Hope.

If I was to go into specifics I would like to say I think Renewed Hope is in need of some love.  I thought it was probably mediocre when it was 6% in beta, but then nerfed to 4% it isn’t great at all.  It isn’t really that fun of a talent either, but because crit is hard to come by for me I have it.  I kept thinking oh man you must be able to get some high crit and that is why they nerfed it but we can come no where near a Paladin, and crit on Priestly gear hard to come by.

Much talk has been made over the Hymns.  I like the idea of the Hymn of Hope but I believe it is poorly executed.  My suggestion would be to have it return mana to the group based on a meaningful percentage of the Priests mana, AND I would like to see it effected by spell haste.  As far as Divine Hymn I’m not sure how much of the spell is salvagable, but I find it not useful to me at all.  What would I like to see in it’s place?  Some fabulously unique and interesting heal of some sort for this expansion

Given this era of Hope and Change we have just entered.  I am hopeful we will see some meaningful change for the Priest in 3.1.  I like the idea of Discipline being our single target tree.  I think to be useful though we still need some AOE tools, I think we have them with PoH, Holy Nova and PoM.  Please keep them in mind of the Disc talents too!