Not That Simple

Hello all.

In the upcoming expansion Blizzard has introduced the holy priest as "A versatile healer who can reverse damage on individuals or groups and even heal from beyond the grave." Far from this truth priest at the current game are all except for "Versatile".

Wrath of the Lich King Chapter:

Yes, I as a priest have to face the cruel reality that at this point you can only develop as a healer one job at a time: Raid Healing ( Link), Single - target healing (Link)or "Damage prevent" healer (Link); and this is not an easy fact because somehow you expect to cover all this things ...but if you ever tried to create an intend of "hybrid" talent you ended with a useless chimera. You even have to have different types of gear for each specs....which makes you even less versatile, for example as a Raid healer you were behind stats like Spellpower (spirit), Haste and Intellect; as Single -Target Healing you were behind Haste and Crit, Spirit and Intellect and as a Discipline healer you wanted a good and a proper balance of Spellpower, Haste and Crit. You may be thinking that it is up to the healers development actually, but this is because you are not thinking in the spells abilities for each cases with its advantages and disadvantages: The Raid healers use a combination of Renew, CoH and PoM to quickly recover high amount of raid damage, but focusing on those spells makes their greater heals and flash heals week and not stronger enough to keep alive one single person who is receiving big amount of damage. For this cases you want a Single target healer, which with a good combination of Flash heals and Greater heals can support great amounts of healing for a tank, but is just too slow to bring enough group heals at the proper time. Those who can fast and efficiently prevent high amount of damage giving the rest of the healer enough time to recover the raid are the Discipline priest, who are greatly appreciated for their survivability spells....but not enough strong on heals, Since their main spell is the PW:S they support themselves on spells like penance and PoM to fill the Cd between shields. But Back to the main topic, versatile is the way you want to be to feel more useful, yes it feels bad when your raid leader ask you to go inside portals in Dreamwalker fight and you have to beg him to keep you outside because with your raid healing spec your single target heals will result in a joke next to a holy paladin or a resto shaman. But enough Drama, i have to accept the fact that this is not all bad ...at lest you can feel that you have more option from where to choose, and in some way if you make the proper choices you can feel like unique in your own way. You have plenty variety to create your own style, and if you cant feel versatile at lest you can feel like an specialist in your job.

Cataclysm Chapter:

Oh well here there is a all different story when you bring the new cataclysm changes up to the table; here the all concept of Holy priest is getting their way to become a real "versatile" healer...with this new talents and powers we indeed are getting a full new system which will work for us depending on which circumstances we will be involved. At this point, where talent changes are getting calm i can talk of a Only and unique holy spec (Link). - if you want to discuss about this spec feel free to, but i doubt changes will make a big difference- and its all because with this versatile thing, our options have gone away, you don't have from where to chose anymore, just a full cool system with cool features but unable to develop your own style (Link). It feels weird seeing everyone with your same spec casting your same powers at the same time to heal the same targets in the same way...just because there isnt other way!. The fact is that the only way to make your own healing style is using what you have from experience which in cataclysm will be 0, to take advantages in every situation, but somehow for me is just not enough....i feel like with all this new cool things...there is not a "should i pick this" talent anymore...just a "must" options.... There is no "secrets" at the time to heal anymore...Just this dilemma, when you get what you want, it result that it wasn't what you really wanted...not in that way.

Well this are just part of my thoughts that off course might change in a future when cataclysm comes out and i can tell this changes from my own experience, but now this are just that....thoughts. What i would like to know is that if you think that this is happening with the rest of classes, or just you if think in a different way. Make your post!.

Thanks for your time.

Noar.

come with every expansion blizzard is dumbing down the game mechanics...why? to please the majority of the wow player which are COMPLETE NOOBS. The people who raid even remotely hardcore I consider NTS semi hardcore( since we only really raid 2 days) is very few at that. Most players pug or do enough raid that a pug can do and also they repsent the majority of the wow players. Thus it makes sense to satisfy the majority than the few, (all business).

It started since TBC, when back in Vanilla epics were ballz hard to get even few at that. Even pvp gears required endless grinding and 40 man raid and you even getting 1 gear is a very rewrading thing. Then come TBC, boom, 25 man, 10 man raids = more ppl with epics, then later boom, pvp gear can be bought with pretty easy to gain honor, boom boom nerf this nerf that, boom boom soon you see everyone running with the gears you got 2 monthes ago. But only took them less than a month.

Then WOTLK hit, wow did they made the game easier, spell power, healing power gone, only spell power...i mean this wasnt that hard to begin with. I honestly like the difference, makes handing out loots less dramatic. Boom heroics give you so many badges a level 80 can get 5k GS in like a week after 80. Honor points easier than ever. Major nerf with ICC buffs and just over all very easy raid fights. This caused many hardcore gamer to get bored of this game or just simply quit.



NOW, lets talka bout Cata, yeah I am gonna play it because it seem like a completely new game. took out spell dmg, , etc those and now the only thing, we really have to worry about is stacking stats, made it easier than ever. No more armor pen either. Less math = LOTS of wow player happy. And what is this 41 point talent...I guess to some sense blizz took out alot of useless talents but now with fewer talents, they are not giving players much choice of specing what. You will see people running exactly the same spec and doing the same cookie cutter ways because that is the ONLY way you can since blizzard made it this way. But hey, a player who has no idea about his class can google, best spec for pve priest healing and boom only one spec, much easier than 3-6 different spec for healing.

hey ill still play this game