WotLK talent/ability speculation

[Mordekhuul]

Every time we fight supremus or kael'thas and I see treants attacking during the kite phase (from our resident moonkin) I start to yell at our resident tree for not getting out of the way and you need to move before you get gazed (ok, so I don't "yell", but perhaps scold is the word).

So if druids can summon Treesh in WotLK, do I get to yell at Mogo every time?

[Kevin]

So if druids can summon Treesh in WotLK, do I get to yell at Mogo every time?

I'm only allowing druids to summon Treesh in WotLK if warriors can summon Conc with Conc(ussion) Blow. :)

I can't begin to tell you how valuable that would be in heroic MgT right now on the PvP fight. Get a few Conc's in PvP gear running around, I'd take it. :)

[Concillian]

I'm only allowing druids to summon Treesh in WotLK if warriors can summon Conc with Conc(ussion) Blow. :)

I can't begin to tell you how valuable that would be in heroic MgT right now on the PvP fight. Get a few Conc's in PvP gear running around, I'd take it. :)

Pallies would even get a chance to improve on perfection with improve on perfection with Improved Conc aura.

The ironic thing is the only time I tried to tank heroic Terrace, I re-spec'd prot and we kept wiping on the PvP boss until I had to go. Sham came in and I assume they managed to pass him. Of course we did have the following adds:
rogue + warrior + hunter + shaman... perhaps the worst possible combination.

[Frag]

Pallies would even get a chance to improve on perfection with improve on perfection with Improved Conc aura.

The ironic thing is the only time I tried to tank heroic Terrace, I re-spec'd prot and we kept wiping on the PvP boss until I had to go. Sham came in and I assume they managed to pass him. Of course we did have the following adds:
rogue + warrior + hunter + shaman... perhaps the worst possible combination.

Yeah, we made it past them first try with Sham...

~FragB)

[Kevin]

Yeah, we made it past them first try with Sham...

~FragB)

Prot warriors feel mostly useless on that fight. I've done it a few times with Kam and while the rest of the instance I'm glad to be prot, that fight... And Kam doesn't have Conc's gear for PvP by a long shot.

Though I'm not sure if I dislike the rogue or the fury warrior more. They both interrupt you a lot but the warrior hurts a lot more. I like the event but it can very in difficulty wildly depending on draw and your group. All I know is that I love to see the eng since he is by far the easiest to deal with.

[Concillian]

Yeah, we made it past them first try with Sham...

~FragB)

Man I need to tank that crap again. I need redemption... with a side of Shard of Contempt (does that make it Contemption?)

Maybe staying arms is the right thing to do for that instance. I just know I am totally useless on some fights trying to tank as arms. But it certainly would be a plus on the 3rd boss.

[Taelas]

Could always try a hybrid build of some kind.

[Tal]

Prot warriors feel mostly useless on that fight. I've done it a few times with Kam and while the rest of the instance I'm glad to be prot, that fight... And Kam doesn't have Conc's gear for PvP by a long shot.

On Shal I just slap on my pvp gear and go dual wield. Then I spend all of my time interrupting whatever is casting with pummel/intercept and throwing concussive blow around like it was candy. Oh and hamstring. Lots and lots of hamstring spam.

[Gregorius]

Oh she still heals them just fine. She always has been able to solo heal undergeared/undermanned/underleveled. It's just annoying that being deep in resto and still having healing be easier on the priest who isn't specced for healing. Priests just have more tools to use so it's easier.

I haven't played a priest past level 20 or so (more and more, this is about the point where I start feeling less like playing a character) but this is definitely the impression I get whenever I get a chance to watch one of Avarice's priests. Especially in ZA, where the relatively small groups really let them show what they can do.

For a while I was torn on Shaman healing. I leveled from 58 to 70 as resto, (excluding a brief relapse into Enhancement) so a lot of that was instance healing. When I got to raids, it really felt like a step back (and still does), since where I have to manage the majority of keeping everyone's health up in 5-mans, raid healing assignments are a lot more straightforward and the skill part changes more from "healing skill" to "staying out of the fire skill." (This is a reason I really like Zul'Aman:))

On the other hand, I really am pretty glad that Resto Shamanism is pretty straightforward. It made it pretty easy to ease into the whole thing, and I don't have to face as much competition for spots as if I were a healing Paladin, Druid, or even Priest.:lol: At this point, I can't even really imagine going to other specs; I don't consider myself a great healer, but I'm certainly better at it than DPS, and I enjoy it more, even playing solo. (I've tried to respec for dailies, but it never really works out.)

I'm really looking forward to future Shaman changes and I hope that they open up the play styles a little more. But I've definitely come to be content with what I have (especially in PvP, which is consistently the sort of frantic, quick-decision-based play I really enjoy), and I think it'll stay that way.

Also, because Heroic Terrace came up in this thread: I really hated it for a while, it felt kind of cheap and (at least for Paladin/Shaman healers) relies more than other 5-mans on party members helping themselves some, which for some people, especially those who can heal themselves and may have been wearing a decent amount of spellpower *cough*, may have taken a while. It's really the only instance though that's still fun and exciting when you outgear it, and moreover the whole thing changes pretty drastically depending on your group setup. (I want to try an all-melee group sometime, but finding four others gutsy enough to try could be difficult.) I'm not really sure when wipes and near-wipes on Vexallus and Delrissa went from frustrating to entertaining, since that's pretty much the opposite of most fights, but any battle that's not just broken down into the same process for me every time, or that I can feel like I pretty much did my best and still barely scraped by, is one I can enjoy repeatedly.

[Artega]

Oh she still heals them just fine. She always has been able to solo heal undergeared/undermanned/underleveled. It's just annoying that being deep in resto and still having healing be easier on the priest who isn't specced for healing. Priests just have more tools to use so it's easier.

And Priests only have a single DPS tree, and it's based wholly on Shadow damage and effects.

Maybe that balances it out - probably not - but it's something to be considered.

EDIT: While I don't have a high-end Restoration Shaman (she's either Elemental or Enhancement, depending on my mood), a good friend of mine does, and he talks about talented Chain Heal like it's god's gift to shamans. I guess it's not as swank as Prayer of Mending or having a true HoT, but it does fill a niche role - healing multiple people at the same time. I guess Priests can do that too, with Circle of Healing, but I haven't seen any deep Holy Priests in PvP for a very long time.

[Kevin]

And Priests only have a single DPS tree, and it's based wholly on Shadow damage and effects.

Maybe that balances it out - probably not - but it's something to be considered.

EDIT: While I don't have a high-end Restoration Shaman (she's either Elemental or Enhancement, depending on my mood), a good friend of mine does, and he talks about talented Chain Heal like it's god's gift to shamans. I guess it's not as swank as Prayer of Mending or having a true HoT, but it does fill a niche role - healing multiple people at the same time. I guess Priests can do that too, with Circle of Healing, but I haven't seen any deep Holy Priests in PvP for a very long time.

You under estimate how much damage a preist geared and spec'd for holy damage can do if you think they only have 2 damage options. 1000+ DPS in Kara/T5/Badge sustained over 6+ minute fights is not out of reach by any stretch of the imagination. And I've read that holy priests out DPS shadow priest in the very end game too and they don't need to have a ret pally with them, they do need a shadow priest for the longer fights though, but you can also just give them an innervate since they tend to try and get pretty high spirit levels as well. Just because it isn't common doesn't mean it doesn't work. :)

[Treesh]

EDIT: While I don't have a high-end Restoration Shaman (she's either Elemental or Enhancement, depending on my mood), a good friend of mine does, and he talks about talented Chain Heal like it's god's gift to shamans. I guess it's not as swank as Prayer of Mending or having a true HoT, but it does fill a niche role - healing multiple people at the same time. I guess Priests can do that too, with Circle of Healing, but I haven't seen any deep Holy Priests in PvP for a very long time.

Yes, talented chain heal is damned nice. I've never said it isn't nice to have. It's also really freaking far down in the tree. Untalented chain heal is just rather meh when you get folks with some real hitpoints. I do miss it sometimes when I'm on the priest though, but I can either slap a renew on folks, prayer of mending (if it's not just a one time damage shot to those three people), binding heal if I'm one of the three hurt (although I usually don't unless I need to be quick), or just a prayer of healing. If I really need to push out the HPS on multiple folks for a somewhat sustained time frame, I can pop Power Infusion, get prayer of healing casting faster and taking less mana as a Holy DPS spec priest so I can pour on the healing oomph if I really need to. There are simply more options available to a priest because of the skills available to the class, not gearing, not spec, but built in. I'm simply hoping for more options for the shaman coming up in WotLK so it's not so damned boring while having to pay more attention at the same time. Although I really don't know how they'd manage it. :)

Edit: And no, I don't want them to take options away from the priest. The flexibility is part of the fun of the class. I just remember being able to be flexible with my role during a fight on my shaman too. That's what I'm missing. During any single fight I could melee, cast or heal and still be able to contribute. Now since the numbers (player health, mob health, player DPS) have gotten so huge, you have to choose a specialization in order to be able to keep up while some of the "pure" classes (although there really aren't many pure classes in WoW) and not be a liability.

[Pantalaimon]

While I don't have a high-end Restoration Shaman (she's either Elemental or Enhancement, depending on my mood), a good friend of mine does, and he talks about talented Chain Heal like it's god's gift to shamans. I guess it's not as swank as Prayer of Mending or having a true HoT, but it does fill a niche role - healing multiple people at the same time. I guess Priests can do that too, with Circle of Healing, but I haven't seen any deep Holy Priests in PvP for a very long time.

I know this is kind of a hijack, mostly because I'm fairly certain you're not talking about 25-person healing, but it really is god's gift to shamans. Our guild only has one and a half resto shamans, and pushing fights like Teron, Mother, and especially Bloodboil with only one in the raid, even with two holy priests, is noticeably more difficult than two. I can only imagine SWP with one/two shammies as being far and away more difficult than most guilds which bring anywhere from three to six (!!). WTB Resto shammies:)

[Mordekhuul]

I know this is kind of a hijack, mostly because I'm fairly certain you're not talking about 25-person healing, but it really is god's gift to shamans. Our guild only has one and a half resto shamans, and pushing fights like Teron, Mother, and especially Bloodboil with only one in the raid, even with two holy priests, is noticeably more difficult than two. I can only imagine SWP with one/two shammies as being far and away more difficult than most guilds which bring anywhere from three to six (!!). WTB Resto shammies:)

A lot of folks are really wondering what the WotLK changes for paladins and resto shaman will be, as I follow two pertinent threads over on the EJ forums.

You have Gurgthock and some other shaman on one hand, saying that the prevelance of fights where the raid takes consistent damage and players can group up really helps resto shaman shine in TBC, but on fights where the raid takes little damage or has to spread out significantly, they are the worst choice for a healer outside of the usefulness of rotating bloodlusts.

You have healadins on the other hand indicating that outside of MT healing, which priests can also do quite well, they don't bring much to the table except their rather significant buffs, which diminish beyond a third paladin (of any stripe - one healadin, one ret, and one prot satisfies it).

WotLK could change any of that, for sure.

[Pantalaimon]

You have Gurgthock and some other shaman on one hand, saying that the prevelance of fights where the raid takes consistent damage and players can group up really helps resto shaman shine in TBC, but on fights where the raid takes little damage or has to spread out significantly, they are the worst choice for a healer outside of the usefulness of rotating bloodlusts.

I completely agree. Our healing corps shines on fights with little to no raid damage. Kaz'rogal, Anetheron, etc. are all fights where we blazed through, largely for that reason I'm sure. Well, and also the fact the fights themselves aren't as hard as the fights we're learning now:P

The lack of shamans has only come up recently, but from all indications it will only get worse as we carry on. Raid damage is the easiest and most prevalent way that Blizzard tends to make healing "hard".

To be fair though, besides bloodlusts we'd also love to have more to stick them in DPS groups for delicious totems:P

You have healadins on the other hand indicating that outside of MT healing, which priests can also do quite well, they don't bring much to the table except their rather significant buffs, which diminish beyond a third paladin (of any stripe - one healadin, one ret, and one prot satisfies it).

WotLK could change any of that, for sure.

Again, I completely agree here. It's strange, when BC first came out I was playing a holy priest and felt they were the weakest healer - I remember one notable interview where someone important in Nihilim agreed that holy priests "Needed help".

But now that mantle has fallen to Holy Paladins, and as you mentioned, it's often best to bring only one. Priests can do everything they do and better. Haha "everything" <_<... okay, well, should rephrase that. Priests can MT heal better than them - since the regen patch, they have much better longevity, HPS, and extra bonus utility heals.

[Mordekhuul]

Again, I completely agree here. It's strange, when BC first came out I was playing a holy priest and felt they were the weakest healer - I remember one notable interview where someone important in Nihilim agreed that holy priests "Needed help".

Was it the 2.4 spirit changes that pushed priests over the top for you? A certain priestly Lurker was telling me he felt that way. *cough*vor_lord*cough*

[Concillian]

Was it the 2.4 spirit changes that pushed priests over the top for you? A certain priestly Lurker was telling me he felt that way. *cough*vor_lord*cough*

That pushed it over the top, but priests did get a lot of help since that time.

meditation / intensity buff helped MP5
T6 content happened and made priests useful for CoH
2.4 happened with the massive regen buff

These allow priests to gear significantly differently. At the time they were wanting MP5 gear, because spirit was clearly not as good. Since the buffs, you have a variety of gear available, with spirit being preferred, but regen so good, you can almost ignore it as a stat and just go for +heal and +haste, which scales priests healing abilities quite well actually.

At the same time paladins saw the nerf bat a little.

When TBC first came out, they could not run OOM, and that was their big advantage. Well now most healers cannot run OOM, so it comes down to flexibility and paladins are definitely not flexible. Priests, who have the most number of tools available have begun to stand out.

[oldmandennis]

A smite priest doesn't compete with a shadow priest for a raid slot, they compete with a mage - and assuming comparable skill/gear the mage should win that every time.

If you were dead set on bringing the exact same classes/specs to every raid it might be an interesting bit of flexibility though.

Holy pallys are also suffering from the rise of prot and ret making the marginal utility of their blessing less valuable. Their ability to keep a tank up has gotten less and less useful as tank gib has become less of a mana drain. That's because the HP of one tank can't scale as fast as the healing ability of 7-8 healers. When a pally is sitting on a tank that's **all** they can do is cancel-cast at him. All other healers have some options - and shamans or priests have the armor buff that is pretty important in some spots like stomp.

[Swiss Mercenary]

You under estimate how much damage a preist geared and spec'd for holy damage can do if you think they only have 2 damage options. 1000+ DPS in Kara/T5/Badge sustained over 6+ minute fights is not out of reach by any stretch of the imagination. And I've read that holy priests out DPS shadow priest in the very end game too and they don't need to have a ret pally with them, they do need a shadow priest for the longer fights though, but you can also just give them an innervate since they tend to try and get pretty high spirit levels as well. Just because it isn't common doesn't mean it doesn't work. :)

1000 DPS in T5/Badge gear is really nothing to write home about, when mages put out 1200, rogues/enh shamans at 1300, and warlocks are putting out 1400 + debuffs.

At least, I think that's what our numbers looked like when we stepped into BT.

[Mordekhuul]

There are some really interesting changes leaking out of the F&F alpha at this point. I'll try to summarize a few of the more game changing experiments that seem to be underway, to save folks caching up on the 120+ page WotLK elitist jerks thread.

First, as referenced here and in various other points in that thread, it looks like gear in WotLK may no longer have a separate +heal stat, at all.

Instead, gear would have straight up +dmg, at different values and item budget costs than it does today, and spell coefficients on damage and healing spells would be adjusted as needed.

In addition, reportedly +crit, +hit, and +haste has been changed so that there are not different versions for casters vs. melee. In other words, a paladin armor with +hit on it would both help his Righteous Defense hit (currently based on melee +hit) and his Judgement of Righteousness hit (currently based on spell hit).

Someone also mentioned that lifebloom and rejuv have been changed to only trigger a 1.0 second global cooldown. While this would be a buff, I agree with the poster that mentioned this - surely that won't go llve simply because it would force poor druids to spend even more time just staring at Grid and clique'ing their instant heals all over the darn place.

Anyway, the gear changes will be interesting to watch as Blizz experiments. They are clearly looking for ways to make gear more widely useful, reduce sharding, etc. Certainly wouldn't hurt the holy priests to be able to turn around and smite the crap out of folks in PVP or when farming without changing their gear much.