Priestly Game Mechanics
Posted by Jay | Filed under World of Warcraft
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.
Priest Raid healing Post 3.08
Posted by Jay | Filed under World of Warcraft
Generally when a spell is nerfed, the community goes up in arms. I’ve purposely avoided the healing forums and generally most priest discussions on the topic of the 6 second cooldown on CoH. Safely I can say it didn’t make that much of a difference.
As I’ve stated before, priests are all about utility. Not utility like levitate on any raid member, although its sweet. Utility in that we have a variety of spells to accomplish almost every task. For instance, last night our priest healers experimented with holy nova, prayer of healing, coh rotation, every possible combination we could think of. In the end, a shaman held the top spot for raid healing with 2 priest not far behind. Not much has changed.
Loatheb was a lot of fun, although granted that encounter isn’t bound by a cool down. Priest healing didn’t really suffer on Maxxeanenawheahhowever you spell it. We cleared OS, Vault, plague and spider wings. Tomorrow my reactions with the full clear, and if I’m lucky, I’ll be going disc!
Lost in Space and six weeks later!
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
First, I made it through crunch.
Second, I hit 80 on my priest.
Third, I’ve raided as both discipline (very enjoyable) and holy (powerful but boring).
Fourth, I got my Valorous Shoulders. They’re hawt!
There are several topics that I’d like to discuss. 1 I’ll actually discuss, 1 I’ll mention and 1 that deserves its own post. The topic deserving its own post is a discussion on existing and possible future priest healing mechanics. As a note, I REALLY like the way discipline plays and I would like to see some major mechanical breakdown of the CoH tree… oops, I meant holy tree.
I’m going to mention the addition of the 6 second CoH cooldown and discuss briefly my feelings on it. I feel if a player rolled a priest to mash 1 button 50% of the time then they should have rolled either a paladin or shaman for healing. The largest distinguisher between the priest class and other healing classes is the sheer volume of tools available to you.
- Flash heal, quick cast
- Greater heal, long cast
- Power word: Shield, instant
- Power word: Fort, buff
- Shadow Protection, buff
- Renew, instant
- Prayer of Healing, long cast, multiple targets
- Prayer of Mending, instant, multiple targets
- Hymn, mana regen, channeled
- Fear Ward, instant buff
- and the list continues
As a brief list, all untalented, we can accomplish and heal through every possible scenario the developers at blizzard decide to throw at us. We may not be the best at each scenario, but we bring enough utility that it doesn’t matter.
I happen to be one of the silent many that welcome the 6 second cooldown to CoH. I really look forward to the introduction of the necessary smart choices that make a raider what they are. I look forward to making stupid DPS accountable for standing in the fire, moving while flame wreathed and/or standing in AoE. I look forward to bringing back smart pulls where the tank manages LoS to the raid, healers hide behind corners and hunters are more than just moving turrets that can’t kyte. Lemme tell you, when a hunter can’t kyte effectively during the Gluth encounter, my blood boils. Leave that player, you can find a similar class.
I’m looking forward to the good old days of raiding, where every player had to be aware of what was going on and still complete their task. Players that don’t just look at grid, or xperl, or whatever and access every situation for the better of the raid. Greater heal takes roughly 2.25 seconds fully hasted and talented, that’s 2.25 seconds where you’re eyes can meander around the screen, looking for the next target or danger will robinson! Flash heal provides one second, believe me, your brain can make a decision in that time, just watch out for scratches from spiders, apparently, that’s a desease we cannot abolish.
Along the path to 80.
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
First and foremost, I’ve been taking my time to get to 80. The raid content will still be there. I may not participate in the guild first, but I’ll get there.
I’ve really been enjoying the slow trek. The quest hubs are in small digestible chunks, roughly about 30 minutes to complete an area and move on. The lore is interesting, although I care nothing for the tuskarr, they happen to be a means to an end.
What I am enjoying is the new equipment, instancing and class balance. I’m spec’d holy with 11 points to shadow for mind flay and 2 points into meditation from disc. It rocks! This is the first time since Warhammer Online that I’ve been able to effectively level as a healing class. And man is it awesome!
Instancing is by far the creme de la creme in WotLK. The encounters are well done and will prep the majority of players for 10 mans. Following that, I hope the 10 mans train the player to accomplish the 25 mans. Hopefully, we’ll see raiding be a larger part of the average players play schedule than last expansion. If raiding becomes the norm instead of 5 mans, many studies in social dynamics of gaming will likely need to be updated.
So far, I’m almost 73! I’ve run Utgarde Keep thrice, AZ twice and nexus more times than I can count. Nexus is by far the most epic of the three with AZ being the most fun. The keep has the better loot, I just find it uninteresting. Instancing is where its at!
Dynamic World State
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry, World of Warcraft
DISCLAIMER: Let’s leave Muds out of the equation. We know MMOs as a genre are catching up to MUD in tech.
DISCLAIMER: DK spoilers
Dynamic character state, or RPG, is easier then dynamic world state. Historically, looking at the amount of MMOs with dynamic character progression is par for the course. World events, that actually change the world, ala Final Fantasy 3, are extremely rare. In addition to rare, they almost never affect the game world in a permanent way.
Imagine my surprise, while firing up a Death Knight that the new phasing technology actually creates the impression of “affect” on the game world. Progressing through the story line began with a town being scouted byt he scourge. Continuing to the final conflict where the town is burned to the ground. This happened while I was playing. Yes, it happened LIVE!
This is fairly significant. And I also realise this happened COMPLETELY under the radar for the average player. No one knows and very few people are talking about it. I wanted to point out that Blizzard has some interesting technology that has the potential to put the player in control of their world.
With a new blizzard MMO around the corner(3-5 years), my hope is that they created a fully character and world dynamic MMO for all to enjoy. Maybe this once, they’ll lead the industry instead of borrowing innovation.
