RSS Class Q&A Series: Priest

Class Q&A Series: Priest Two Q&A in the same day? Now that's surprising! *hint* <div class="blizzquotewrap"><div class="blizzquoteinner"><div class="blizzquoteheader">Quote from: Zarhym (<a href="http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/18983421294-class-qa-series-priest.html" target="_blank" style="color: white;">Source</a>)</div><div class="blizzquote">Community Team: Joining us today to close out this round of the Class Q&A Series by addressing questions collected from the priest community is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft, Ghostcrawler, who has enlisted the assistance of several members of our class design team to provide the most thorough answers possible. We’d like to begin as we always do by addressing what priests add to the World of Warcraft experience. Q: Where do priests fit in the current scope of things, and where do you see them from this point going forward? What makes them unique? Ghostcrawler: When you think of the priest in the context of traditional MMOs you think of the token healer, usually part of the “holy trinity” along with the warrior and mage. Many players who picked the priest as their character when they started the game had the expectation that they would be the premier healer, playing the role of support. Certainly in the beginning of World of Warcraft the priest was the class you chose when you were looking for a healer, and the class was adept at filling that role. However, unlike in other RPGs we’ve tried to make healing a role that many classes can fill. This is why sometimes priests can feel that they aren’t balanced correctly, since they aren’t necessarily the best healer. In World of Warcraft, the priest isn’t a stronger healer than the other classes, but does have unmatched versatility. At its core the priest has two unique talent trees for healing, while the others only have one. Furthermore, the priest has strong heal-over-time spells (HoTs), direct heals, and area-of-effect (AoE) heals. So where the power of the priest comes in is how you use your entire repertoire of healing tools together to overcome a situation, rather than focusing on one aspect. Players sometimes call this the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none role, but we don’t really view it that way. The priest has a big toolbox. That makes you versatile, but at the cost (in player skill) of knowing how to match the right spell for the right job. The trade-off of the healing priest isn’t in trading power for versatility, but in having narrow niches for spells but a lot of spells. One other way we’ve tried to make the priest class more enjoyable is by fleshing out its damage-dealing talent specialization (spec), the Shadow tree. In the beginning, the Shadow spec was more of a leveling tree and not really viable for high-end content late game. In The Burning Crusade, it didn’t really keep up in damage compared to other classes in raiding but it did bring strong utility. Finally, in Wrath of the Lich King we increased its damage-dealing potential to make it near that of a primary damage-per-second (dps) caster -- such as a mage -- while also retaining some of its unique utility which made it cool during The Burning Crusade. Overall, we feel the priest is one of the most versatile classes in the game, and can be the most enjoyable of the healer classes in the game because of its feature of having two different unique talent specs providing two different types of play styles. And for players who enjoy the dps aspect, you always have the option of going to the dark side as Shadow to either melt faces in PvP or help take down foes in PvE. As for moving forward, in a nutshell we’d like to improve the Holy tree’s PvP niche and polish the Shadow tree a bit more for both aspects of the game. Community Team: Since the role of a priest can vary drastically depending on the type of role the player wishes to fill, let’s focus on Shadow priests and dealing damage first. Q: What makes a Shadow priest effective in a raid environment versus a PvP environment? Ghostcrawler: Shadow priests have some start up time to get all of their DoTs going before the damage really starts coming in. This is easier in a boss fight that lasts for several minutes and harder in a really dynamic PvP environment. Q: Since a lot of the damage a Shadow priest does builds with damage-over-time (DoT) spells, are you concerned about them being well-rounded enough to do adequate damage in shorter PvE encounters, 5-player dungeons, or in the Arenas? Ghostcrawler: This is a long answer. First, we want a certain amount of class diversity. We try to make sure that everyone’s single-target dps is comparable to that of similar specs or classes, and we try to make sure that most damage specs can do some amount of AoE damage. But we don’t obsess with say slow group pulls compared with say fast single-target pulls to make sure everyone’s damage is comparable in every situation. Second, if the pulls are really that quick, nobody is counting on your dps to begin with. What I mean is that if you are pulling and killing groups of mobs faster than every 20 seconds, then the extra damage you might or might not bring isn’t really an issue because stuff is just collapsing anyway. On the other hand, if the pulls take 20 seconds, then you should have plenty of time to get your DoTs up before stuff starts to die. Third, there is an issue of player skill here too. If your group kills the skull first every time, then maybe you want to DoT the third or fourth mob in the group so that you do have the benefit of time elapsing. DoTs just work differently. The Enhancement shaman by contrast can be at 100% on one target, then switch and be at 100% on the new target instantly. Not every class or spec can do that and class diversity would be a little boring if they could. Fourth, the issue that we think is most problematic is found in the Shadow talents. Many of them say basically "while your DoTs are ticking." This means in situations where the DoTs can’t tick (say those very short PvE fights, or sometimes in PvP) you are doubly punished since now those talents aren’t pulling their weight. The Shadow tree could benefit from more talents that affect all damage and not just the DoTs. Q: Is it too easy to dispel DoTs right now? Ghostcrawler: In a word, no. Priests of all specs used to benefit a lot more from “junk” buffs and debuffs to “protect” their spells than we typically allow these days. We just didn’t think that was an aspect of the game we really wanted to promote. Realizing how dependent Shadow is on DoTs though, we did recently buff the backlash from Vampiric Touch so you get some damage even if it is dispelled. I’ve referenced a few times our desire to make the dispel game more fun and less frustrating, especially in PvP. Dispels shouldn’t totally negate your class abilities. Also remember that all types of damage will be reduced to the current DoT level in 3.2 against targets with resilience. This means that overall the contribution of damage done by DoTs should go up. Q: Are the developers happy with the functionality of Dispersion and is it considered to be an adequately valuable final talent in the Shadow tree? Ghostcrawler: I think the key word here is “final” talent. Players have developed an expectation that the 51-point talent should be the best one in the tree; and for damage-dealing trees that means it’s expected these final talents do more damage than anything else the player has. That’s not really the way we design the trees though. Dispersion is a very valuable spell -- nearly all Shadow priests take it. It’s one of the best “not going to die now” spells in the game. Early on there was a perception that it was a PvP-only spell since it didn’t buff damage, but really it gets a lot of use in PvE as well (and not just for the mana regeneration). Q: Would you consider removing the cast time for Mind Blast to make it a more desirable direct-damage spell given that it already has a cooldown? Ghostcrawler: No. We’d be more likely to mess with the damage rather than the cast time. Obviously if the spell was no cooldown, no cast time then Shadow priests would not ever cast anything else -- it’s a great spell. So the trick is to keep it powerful while giving the player space to cast all those other Shadow priest spells as well. We honestly don’t want too many more instant-cast spells. That suggestion keeps coming up to handle interruptions in PvP and having to move in PvE. But we don’t want you to be able to opt out of those situations -- they are supposed to be challenges. If you’re looking for high direct damage with no cooldown, Mind Flay is supposed to be that spell. Since this question was asked, I suspect, we have announced the healing debuff component to Mind Blast as well. That’s a nice PvP buff as well as making the spell in general more attractive. Q: As many players report that Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch lack viability in PvP settings and Vampiric Embrace tends to generate too much threat in PvE settings, are there any plans you can share to improve the functionality of these spells? Ghostcrawler: Vampiric Touch does a lot of damage. I’d disagree that it lacks viability, and we even buffed the backlash damage a little more. I don’t think the possibility that a spell can be dispelled should be synonymous with lack of viability. It takes a little bit of set-up time to get all of them working in PvE and PvP, but that’s actually something we’re trying to push more classes and specs into instead of going to just instant, burst damage everywhere. We can look at the Vampiric Embrace threat. That’s not feedback we hear often. Shadow priests pulling ...</div></div></div>

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