A Not So Soothing Nerf

[MongoJerry]

The latest general maintenance on the server added a new previously unannounced nerf to Mind Soothe and Soothe Animal:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post804644

This is the latest in a series of attempts to make skills that are mildly useful in certain key moments completely useless. I'm usually one to take a "wait and see" attitude on new changes, but after discovering the changes myself before seeing this post by Ordinn (I was about to report it as a bug), I really don't see Mind Soothe being used much anymore when there's a decent chance of the priest pulling all the aggro of a mob or group of mobs on him or herself.

[Bolty]

This is the latest in a series of attempts to make skills that are mildly useful in certain key moments completely useless.
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Hey Mongo,

In all your time playing a Priest, have you ever used Mind Soothe to bypass content in instances? Or SEEN any Priests doing so?

I know I haven't.

I use Mind Soothe specifically to stop the trains that form when I just want to get from outdoor spot A to outdoor spot B without being bothered all that much.

But hey, there are too many Priest players, so nerfing them is a good idea. :)

-Bolty

[Treesh]

At least Blizzard finally owned up to changing some things with that extended maintenance. For the first few hours after the affected servers were brought online, Blizzard was denying that they had changed anything; just that it was only routine maintenance done. Don't know if that was the coders not communicating with the Community Managers or what, but at least they did finally admit it.

[Raziel]

I've seen a priest soothe his way through instances.. notably Maraudon, soothe your way past all the 3 haeded things after the waterfall.

The idea that he won't be able to do that and we'll probably have to kill them all is... irritating. And i'm sure his soloing abilities just went right out the bloody window.

[Alrin]

After reading some 20 pages of posts, I would have to say the blizzard view is rather odd. First NOW? they realized the spell can be abused? Excuse me, but has there not been a lengthy in-house testing period? Closed beta? Final beta etc? Would it not have been easier to add in a few try-to-soothe-me-if-you-dare mobs in said instance?

Oh well, I'm still buying the game but I think it was a rather poor management decision to crush usability of a skill like that.
Some time next year they will realize there's too much gold floating around and nerf values to "balance" things because it was "skipping content". Puh-leeze.

:rolleyes:

[Kevin]

The latest general maintenance on the server added a new previously unannounced nerf to Mind Soothe and Soothe Animal:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post804644

This is the latest in a series of attempts to make skills that are mildly useful in certain key moments completely useless.  I'm usually one to take a "wait and see" attitude on new changes, but after discovering the changes myself before seeing this post by Ordinn (I was about to report it as a bug), I really don't see Mind Soothe being used much anymore when there's a decent chance of the priest pulling all the aggro of a mob or group of mobs on him or herself.
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Wow, I don't get the uproar. Now the priest spell is inline with the druid spell, remember Soothe animal is a druid skill so they got "nerfed" as well.

The way it was applied was a bit annoying, but I'm believing someone had an error in a batch script or didn't pay attention to the CVS or something else silly and human and put the wrong dang file up causing the change to happen before the patch. Maybe I'm just interpretting the "This was in no way deliberate" to mean that applying the change at all during the cycle was the mistake. Though you could get it as not giving forwarning was the mistake.

I don't really see how the change breaks the spell that badly. I never understood why the priest could sooth everything and the druid could only do animals. Well I understand why the druid could only soothe animals that fits, but I didn't get why the priest could soothe everything.

Fixing the bug of no aggro on a resisted spell is a good thing, at least I haven't seen another spell that can be resisted and not draw aggro. So I figured that was a bug. Though again it should have waited till the patch.

Maybe I'm just chuckling at the uproar over what is just a utility spell anyway. Maybe I'm just being too nice today as well. Oh well.

Edit: Why did I type mage and not priest

[stabby]

I take primary issue with the addition of a cast time. It was very useful when you could just cast it on the run, but...

In any case, I'm going to hold out hope that they're going to do something else to address their content-skipping problems in the next major patch and revert the soothes to their previous instantaneous forms.

[Zarathustra]

I'm just curious why they felt the need to nerf Soothe Animal as well, unless this was an unintentional side-effect of changing the priest spell. The ONLY time I've found a use for Soothe Animal has been to cast on the run while moving through a lower-level area, when I don't feel like fighting every bunny that I move past. This is especially evident when escorting a lower-level character across the world for some weapon training. I can destroy the crocolisks in the wetlands in a couple spells and get no exp for them... I'd rather just speed the trip up and help them get the griffon point.

Now, as a Druid, I'm unable to cast the spell on the run. This more or less cuts its effectiveness in half, as it's always been used as a time-saver rather than a fighting strategy.

I've seen lots of explanation why the Priest version of the spell was nerfed, and while I don't completely agree with it I can understand the need to do SOMETHING to keep them from bypassing instances. But I've seen no word on the Druid.

It's not a complaint. Life goes on and Soothe Animal will probably be on my secondary or tertiary bar now. But I'm curious just why the change was made.

[malphigian]

I've seen a priest soothe his way through instances.. notably Maraudon, soothe your way past all the 3 haeded things after the waterfall.

The idea that he won't be able to do that and we'll probably have to kill them all is... irritating.  And i'm sure his soloing abilities just went right out the bloody window.
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I have too, many times. You could soothe a party past the hydras, kill the pull of lizards, 1 patrol, 1 giant, 1 4 pull, then basically soothe the rest of your way to princess. People were definitely using it to farm.

Also in instances: it could work as a great wipe recovery tool in certain cases, as a way for the priest to get back to the group if they happened to die.

(my priest is lvl 55, fyi)

So, I actually agree it needed a nerf, but the numerous changes they made to it at once made the spell literally useless (I can not imagine where or when I would use it now). I understand they see a pressing need when they see farming going on, but I wish they could have come up with a more subtle solution.

[DarkCrown]

I have too, many times.  You could soothe a party past the hydras, kill the pull of lizards, 1 patrol, 1 giant, 1 4 pull, then basically soothe the rest of your way to princess.  People were definitely using it to farm.

Also in instances: it could work as a great wipe recovery tool in certain cases, as a way for the priest to get back to the group if they happened to die.

(my priest is lvl 55, fyi)

So, I actually agree it needed a nerf, but the numerous changes they made to it at once made the spell literally useless (I can not imagine where or when I would use it now).  I understand they see a pressing need when they see farming going on, but I wish they could have come up with a more subtle solution.
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As far as I know the only place where Mind Soothe was useful for farming was Maraudon. How about making some of the mobs immune to it? Or perhaps moving their locations slightly to make this technique more dangerous.

Soothe animal was a second tier spell at best beforehand. Now with the casting time it's really not of much use.


-DarkCrown

[Raziel]

I take parties into Maraudon. We take a priest. He soothes on occasion. Usually we just kill because the thought of something alive behind us makes us uncomfortable, and 5 minutes is nothing.

However, I imagine he finds Soothe most useful himself for soloing. The poor bugger's in his 50's, and kills things with a wand because he didn't spec shadow. I really feel for him right about now, this nerf must totally suck.

It was also his way of farming herbs - soothe the nearby aggro, herb, run away.

At the end of the day it doesn't make much difference. A high level group has such a small aggro radius you can run past a lot of Maraudon anyway. We always killed the last six giants before the Princess, so wtf?

Realistically, making key guards see stealth and resist soothe would have been far, far smarter. But I guess that route would have, yknow, made sense, so Blizzard didn't take it.

Incidentally, Rogues can stealth and "skip a lot of content" and I don't see anyone giving a damn really ;) I guess it's because the Rogue stealths solo but the Priest soothe saves the party.

They should give Priests a second soothe that only lowers awareness to oneself.

[malphigian]

However, I imagine he finds Soothe most useful himself for soloing.  The poor bugger's in his 50's, and kills things with a wand because he didn't spec shadow.  I really feel for him right about now, this nerf must totally suck.

It was also his way of farming herbs - soothe the nearby aggro, herb, run away.

Yeah, herb farming was my primary use as well. That said, this works about as well to farm herbs: run in like a madman, making sure to grab the nearby mob(s), Psychic Scream, Pick the herb fast, then run away from the train you just made.

It's a little more dangerous, but usually does the job.

[Taeme]

This is a really, really cheap nerf. They threw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.

I'm not a priest but I appreciated soothe with instances simply to offer a little protection from forming giant monster trains. Gives you a little more wiggleroom. I don't think I've ever abused it, but I considered it a big part of 'a good priest'.

Sigh.

Ideally they'll make more stealthbreakers and soothe resisters within instances over time, but I guess they don't have the time to edit all the instances to fix the stupid doan abuse or whatever people are doing with soothe.

[Cryptic]

From a Caydiem post on the main forums:

>>These weren't changes in the name of balance, to my understanding, however -- they were changes to stop people from bypassing certain content, and did not wait for the patch because of that. The developers can and will address balance as they feel warranted in an actual patch.

[Guest]

Exactly - "But hey, there are too many Priest players, so nerfing them is a good idea. smile.gif "

The class is practically non-existant in alliance on my server.

[Raziel]

I heard from someone on my server that Paladins have been known to pull on key +int cloth items and come into instances as healers...

Bugger all priests as alliance, yes. This mate of mine was one of the few and he was damn good at it. And I know this just sucks for him.

I'm extremely angry at Blizzard. There were many, many other ways to solve Maraudon without a stupid blanket change like this.

How hard is it to make mobs immune? Sheesh.

[stabby]

The best part of the whole "Oh noes, people are farming Maraudon!" issue is that even with a decent team (Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Druid, 54+), we can port in, hit Rockslide, Theradras, and Rotgrip, drown, and be back at the instance for another go in just about 30 minutes, killing everything in our way from Earthsong Falls to the relevant bosses.

And we still haven't found the items we were trying to get, either. It is to weep. I wants my Elemental Rockridge Leggings, I does.

[Caline]

At the end of the day it doesn't make much difference.  A high level group has such a small aggro radius you can run past a lot of Maraudon anyway.  We always killed the last six giants before the Princess, so wtf?
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No kidding. I think the real reason Blizzard felt this was an issue isn't the high level farmers, though. Soothe allowed even high 40s to complete a princess run in a trivial amount of time.

As far as stealth goes, apparently druids can still stealth in and kite the Princess until she drops. I'm curious as to what kind of content-skipping mayhem an entire party of 3 Druid 2 Rogue could accomplish in *any* instance.

It amuses me that while nerf threats and 'serious exploit' whining comes and goes, once someone puts up a video, the nerf bat strikes fast and hard. Maybe we can turn this to our advantage somehow. :rolleyes:

[MongoJerry]

I don't really see how the change breaks the spell that badly.  I never understood why the priest could sooth everything and the druid could only do animals.  Well I understand why the druid could only soothe animals that fits, but I didn't get why the priest could soothe everything.

That change doesn't bother me *as much*, but as for your Druid vs Priest thing, part of a Priest's primary nature is the ability to bend minds to the Priest's will, so there's nothing wrong with having a Priest be better at something like this than another class.

Fixing the bug of no aggro on a resisted spell is a good thing, at least I haven't seen another spell that can be resisted and not draw aggro.  So I figured that was a bug.  Though again it should have waited till the patch.

No, that's why you're not getting it. It wasn't a bug. That was how the spell was designed and how it's worked for more than a year. This is the issue that's suddenly changed everything and really has made it a nearly useless skill. Add in the fact that you have to stop moving to cast it and it's just useless. It was hard enough to keep up Soothe on more than one mob at once long enough to slip by. Now, it'll be impossible.

[MongoJerry]

No kidding. I think the real reason Blizzard felt this was an issue isn't the high level farmers, though. Soothe allowed even high 40s to complete a princess run in a trivial amount of time.

You're saying the issue is that some priests were Mind Soothing past like 3 easy to kill hydras? Give me a break! My groups never Mind Soothed past the hydras and we would complete 3-boss princess runs in 35 minutes (Landslide, the Princess, and the croc). It's not Mind Soothe that needs to be nerfed, it's the stupid last section of the Maraudon instance.