Patch 3.1: Die Rolle des Priesters

Blizzard hat heute ein Posting verfasst, in dem sie versuchen die Rolle des Priester zu beschreiben. Ich werde darauf nun nicht näher eingehen und widme mich gleich im Anschluss lieber den bevorstehenden Änderungen, die da mit Patch 3.1 auf uns zukommen werden.

The Role of the Priest
This is an experiment. One of the things that has confused me a little are all of the posts from players who say they don’t understand the role of the priest class. It is unclear to us why there is so much confusion about this particular class, which seems to us to be fairly straightforward.

We are often reluctant to lay out our design goals very clearly, because frankly some players tend to use those statements to attempt to lawyer us into changes („I’m supposed to be the master of AE damage“) or would rather argue about the design instead of providing feedback on how the class actually works.

Nevertheless, because players have asked for it so often and in the interest of trying to foster the discussion, here is what we think of as the role of the priest class.

The Role of the Priest
The priest is a caster class that uses Holy and Shadow magic. Priests can only wear cloth armor and have a limited selection of weapons, but do most of their damage and healing from range. They make up for their low armor with spells that offer protection and healing.
• Discipline — this is a healing tree that emphasizes survival and single-target healing. Discipline specializes in damage absorption and prevention rather than restoring health, although they are very capable in that department too.
• Holy — this is a healing tree that has a spell suited for every situation. Holy priests can heal groups, heal individuals, heal tanks, or do all three in a single encounter. They are better at group healing than Discipline priests, but don’t have as many damage prevention capabilities.
• Shadow — this tree sacrifices healing for damage. Shadow priests can restore health and mana to their group while casting their spells. Like the Shadow damage of warlocks, Shadow priest damage tends towards drains and damage over time spells.

Jack of all trades?
I’m pretty sure „jack of all trades, master of none“ is something the community came up with, not us. All I have ever said is you can’t be „jack of all trades, master of all.“ You can’t be „the best healer in the game.“ We have no problem if Disc priests can equal Holy paladins or if Holy priests can AE heal as well as Resto shamans. Priests just can’t AE heal so well that Resto shamans become pointless. A group that takes all Holy priests for its healers should feel like it is missing out (though it should still be possible). I would say the same thing about every class in the game. (Source)

Shadow Priest DPS and survavibility
We think Shadow priest damage is good in PvE and PvP, minus a few annoying bugs. We think the problem is that Shadow priests just can’t survive long enough to do damage. That is a combination of some classes doing too much damage, but also Shadow defenses being too weak.

Prayer of Healing
Yes, we think the cast time is everything. It’s not a good spell for emergencies (like CoH is). It’s a good spell for a group with several people who are low, but who aren’t in imminent danger of dying. Ideally, we still want the group distinction to go away when you are in a raid, but we aren’t quite there yet. Until we can reach that point (and who knows when that will be) at least you can heal a group with PoH instead of having to worry about who is in your group.
Our plan is not to make PoH a smart heal. We went that direction with CoH because the instant cast made it possible to just go heal multiple groups quickly. We don’t think there is a danger of that with PoH. So yes, you would target the rogue and it would heal her and the 4 others in her group. But we’ll see how things stand when more players have a chance to try it out. I’ve already healed Ulduar. /gloat