Cloth tank pvp concept doesnt work

#0 - Dec. 24, 2008, 7:02 a.m.

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?

Ghostcrawler

#6 - Dec. 24, 2008, 8:26 p.m.

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).

Ghostcrawler

#39 - Dec. 24, 2008, 9:30 a.m.

Q u o t e:
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.

I understand your point, but we actually do ask players to choose between more damage or healing and survivability. It is supposed to be an interesting decision. When you really want a talent because it is really useful for PvP and that prevents you from getting another talent that you also ideally want, you can argue that means the talent trees are actually working. One of the things I like about PvP specs is they do place a lot more emphasis on hybrid builds in order to pick up certain talents, while a great many PvE specs choose one tree and try to max it out.

I am probably taking the mob example far beyond what you intended, but I think it is actually illustrative. You are going to defeat, by a huge order of magnitude, most of the mobs you meet. In many examples it won't even be a challenge -- you will two shot them. If the PvP matchmaking is working well, however, you will lose 50% of every match (and that assumes classes are perfectly balanced, which I won't pretend to claim). It is much harder to feel like a hero in an Arena because we aren't trying to make you feel like a hero. Psychologically, I think that is a bigger deal than a lot of players realize.