ETA on Priest talent trees?

#0 - Dec. 30, 2008, 12:33 a.m.

GC,

Thank you for being candid a few months back and saying that priests talent trees will get looked at and possible changed around.

Q u o t e:

Priests:
Mandatory talents and potential changes to all trees
What we would like to do with all of the trees is give you options where possible. Cookie-cutter builds may always be a reality in a game like this to some extent, but ideally you could get the core of what you need to be competitive (in dps, CC, healing or whatever) and have a few talent points left over for fun talents.

Now I'm being candid here, which is a little risky, because mean players tend to turn it into "ZOMG they are shipping the game before it's perfect." But I think rational people realize that with a game the scope of WoW and a team as creative as ours, there are always more things you want to do. So there is the preamble. If this comes back to bite me, I'll just be less forthcoming with our thought process in the future.

We do think there are parts of the priest tree that are too bloated, and we aren't 100% happy with some of the decisions you're forced to make. Getting Meditation is one. Another is trading off Imp DS or Guardian Spirit. This involves a major change to probably all three trees though, so it's probably not going to happen before LK goes live. We are trying to minimize sweeping changes right now, just to minimize introducing potential bugs into the game. But it's something you will probably start seeing before too long, perhaps in bits and pieces or perhaps not. A lot of that will be informed on how priests do in PvP and PvE once Lich King ships as well.

We would like an Idea of some Ideas your looking at and also when you think you would implement this.

The CoH nerf has hit the priest class hard and we would just like some encouraging news.

Thank you.

Ghostcrawler

#22 - Jan. 1, 2009, 1:25 a.m.

One of the issues with Meditation per se is that players don't seem to be having many mana regen issues, especially with 25-player raid gear and especially with some form of Replenishment in the raid. We're trying to get a better feel for what to do with mana regen at the moment.

One of the things I said before about "mandatory" talents like Meditation is that we like to have good talents, even ones that convince players to branch out from their dominant tree into a second tree. Where it gets tricky is when it doesn't feel like a decision. Meditation has felt like that at some stages in the game, but if we're reaching a point where people can just stack Spirit or Int and not worry about regen, then Meditation starts to look a lot less mandatory.

There are some other things we want to do with the Priest talent trees. It shouldn't take until next expansion. However I am extremely reluctant to give hard or even estimated timelines for things like this. You can see how some players can get impatient even with vague timelines.

Ghostcrawler

#78 - Jan. 1, 2009, 8:23 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I really can't see why they dont just remove MP5, remove the five second rule, nerf spirit's regen, and turn mana regen into a rating based on spirit.

We have talked about doing something like this. However, as confusing as it can be, one of the things we get from MP5 is a different stat that might appeal to some players (depending on class and play style) more than others. With a change like you suggest, then Spirit becomes something everyone wants in large amounts, and we lose some of the difference in play style. (A few players mention this above.) Traditionally, paladins never cared much about Spirit regen because they were never out of the five second rule, while druids cared quite a bit because they could sit back and let hots tick. This changed toward the end of BC.

Q u o t e:
I think hes confusing stacking int as a paladins so you never oom spaming HoL (with its free new and improved aoe heal) and what stacking spirit will do for a priest with out med.

Tip, unless your standing around for 5 secs doing nothing then you get 0 back from spirit with out med (I know you know this, but you made the comment....) - stacking int only would make sense.

The purpose of talents like Meditation was not to allow you to ignore the five second rule. The FSR is there to reward casters who can occasionally take a break to allow for regen. We are concerned that some of the talent and gear choices that we've introduced have allowed players to opt out of the FSR.

Int can be beneficial to any Spirit-based healer now that Int also affects regen. Depending on your class and spec, it can even be better than Spirit.

Overall though I think you are interpreting my comments too narrowly. There is no reason for us to move Meditation or even make it baseline if we change the numbers or the mechanics behind regen. Since signs point to regen becoming too trivial in the future (thereby making stats benefitting regen unattractive) this is something we are looking into.

The whole mechanic for mana regen (for all classes) is something we're not entirely happy with.