Priestly Game Mechanics
Posted On Friday, January 23rd, 2009 By Jay
As promised, I’ve returned to discuss the topic no one shall ever mention! There are new game mechanics on the horizon for priests and healers in general. I know there are many ideas out there. I’ve been stewing over some interesting proactive spells to add to the priest arcenal. I was recently inspired by a simple, yet loaded question over at World of Matticus. The question revolved around perceived hindrances or help hands from added bonus effects while healing. Hearing that Blizzard is currently working on a large scale healing review, I’d like to brain storm a little bit.
For titles and reference sake, I like the term prayer when naming new priest mechanics. Hold on! Prayers exist currently in the priest healing paradigm. That’s right! Prayer of Healing was our first prayer which healed every member in the group for a relatively large amount. Not, correct me if I’m wrong, Prayer of Healing was a newer mechanic to what is now known as Vanilla Wow.
Fast forward to BC, with the introduction of Prayer of Mending. Awesome spell. It acts as a buff, Upon the target taking damage, the buff will jump to a closer target and reduce its counter by 1. This was and is still an amazing spell.
What could we possibly add to the mix? How about:
- Prayer of Confidence – Increase all healing done by your spells to the target by x%
- Prayers of Protection – The target avoids 2% of all damage taken and your healing is reduced by 50%. Target must be healed by the healer every 4 seconds or the prayer is lost. Stacks up to 4 times.
- Prayer of Efficiency – Restore 0.25% maximum mana upon receiving a heal from the priest. This buff stacks on the caster up to 4 times.
- Divine Aegis would become Prayer of Divine Aegis with the same effect, talented in the discipline tree.
- Surge of Light would become prayer of surge of light, a self buff placed on the priest.
Small steps and ultimately, probably very far from the actual implementation. I’m looking forward to a little more proactive responsibility on the part of the priest and the player. Time will tell what Blizzard thinks.
Tbh, sounds pretty interesting.
Prayer of surge of light sounds bit.. complicated, Rather have it Prayer of surging light imo.
Would you mean them as additional spells to be casted or some sort of effects to spells?
Moreso, would Prayer of Protection stack like 50%/25%/12.5%/6.25% healing done (healing * (1/2)^4) or like 50%/100%/150%/200% healing reduced?
Would 200% healing reducing mean that your GHeal takes 10k health off the target?
All in all, interesting indeed.
Frnit,
I was envisioning the penalties and bonuses to stack in the same way as that shadow weaving would stack on the priest as shadow.
Most of these ideas could be spells cast in the same manner or specific buffs that would work just like PW:S. Dual cooldown, so as to not abuse them and more then likely these effects would be talented.
I meant the damage reduction would stack up to 4 times for a total of 8% damage reduction to the target and 50% reduced healing by the priest. It would likely have to be reduced in case of this buff stacking, in retrospect for balance, to 1% damage reduction, stacks up to 3 times. That way multiple priests could stack the buff.