Since I was unhappy with priest in general in 9.0 I made a whole army of healing alts…
Have to say: I hadn’t quite realized just how “niche” (a nice of way of saying 99% useless) our so-called utility so often is, compared to totems, immunities, mobility, interrupts, brez and/or lust.
Things like Shackle Undead or LoF or MC now just kind of piss me off when I switch toons and play with abilities that actually just work all the time.
I suppose so.
What comes to mind for me in in Zul’Aman those fire caster guys that AOE fire balls and destroy you. Having the capability to Mind Control or Dispel magic helps control the damage output.
Cases like that are great fun when you have the rare tools to tackle them. But I just think there is a lack of creativity because they are working within the parameters of what most can do instead of thinking like the Legion Mage tower where you have multiple classes/spec doing the same thing but going about it differently based on their inherent capabilities.
I feel like this is a questionable comparison since the twins encounter was designed in such a way that affliction warlocks couldn’t do it at all unless they had a specific legendary, and that Shadow priest pretty much had to play surrender to madness and ignore mechanics until they outgeared the fight in later patches.
See the new PvP talent?
Now imagine that in a PvE situation only slightly different. What if when you interrupt but not lock down a caster, it goes crazy and starts casting insanely fast and doing massive damage and immune to stun and interrupt effects during the duration. Maybe if you Silence off rip, it wont activate that rage mode. Creative content like that is what I think is prevented because not many classes have an answer to it.
Yes, I think that is a content issue again.
Just like how Mind Control does not work on mobs you would LOVE to MC and cleave down the enemy.
Things like that are very restricting and prevent “fun” moments because of our “niche” utility.
Yes, you can hypothetically create scenarios that would make our niche utility very strong. Then you’d take silence in those scenarios. What’s your point?
This sounds an awful lot like content should just be designed around us instead of just allowing us to have the option to have the tools to contend with the content.
The point was that it was an attempt to make content that took advantage of your class/spec strengths.
It was not without flaws however.
What I recall is doing the Mage tower on my Arms Warrior, Frost Death Knight and Havoc Demon Hunter and when you get trapped in the ice ring… each had different ways to handle it. I really liked that.
Demon Hunter can use Chaos nova and get souls to absorb and reset Eyebeam and Chaos nova and then jump and fel rush out. Warrior can leap out. Death Knight can use Anti Magic barrier and slowly chop away until you broke it and then grip or run to boss.
I mean I think they should have more creative design that considers more niche things that not everyone has an answer to. So you have to either brute force through it or have a proper class/spec handle it.
Another example is having a locked door that a Rogue would be good for to bypass area like in Shattered Halls in BC. Or in that case, have a blacksmith with keys.
Also in Court of Stars in Legion, having a profession helps bypass aspects of it. Then with Demon Hunters Spectral Sight to see the Demon leading to last boss.
Things like that I think are really cool and flavorful. I think we should have more of that type of diversity in content to take advantage of more niche class/spec strengths.
I mean sure, now priest gets 1-2 cool things it can do in like… let’s be generous and say 3/8 of the dungeons.
Mass stuns useful in 8/8
Battle rez useful in 8/8
Interrupt useful in 8/8
Lust useful in 8/8
You can give specs niche utility to let them do cool things and set themselves apart from other specs / classes, AFTER you have the basics. And obviously no spec should have everything I listed, but it should at the bare minimum have a real interrupt.
I wouldn’t even mind if that’s Blizz’s vision for the class if they consistently made sure the HPS is there to compensate for the lack of all that.
“OK, glass cannon healer, but you can pump.” That’s fine if that’s the goal… they’ve just been absolutely horrid on delivering on that since Legion.
Well that’s the point isn’t it?
The same answers to the same problems yet not all classes are equal in regards to what they bring.
So you either change all classes to have an answer to all those common problems… or be more diverse in the problems presented to have a more variety of how to approach them.
Obviously its easier to just give each class/spec the proper toolkit ability to answer those problems. But that imo is just lazy. Also, you can see how much they want to pull back at giving so many class/specs similar answers. Do you really think they want to go down that road? From my experience, they WANT to make things more unique in order to have more diverse ways to approaching a problem. The issue is that they haven’t been that successful. So because of that, the mentality is to just go with the simplest solution of just handing out answers to all the classes… but cleary that has been very reserved from how I see things. Its like pulling teeth trying to get them to give answers to things we don’t currently have and never really had.
I agree. But it doesn’t have to be just as good as everyone’s else is the stance I take.
Just like the Demon Hunters has the capability to generate Fury… Priests or “shadow” has the perk of a blanket lockout with a higher than the rest of a cooldown. I think that’s fine really.
It’s not a perk and it never has been in the history of mythic+ It only matters in PvP.
I’d give it up in a heartbeat for 21 seconds off the cd.
In fact shadow used to have a glyph in WoD that took 2 seconds off the silence in exchange for 25 seconds off the cd. A 20 second cd 3 second silence. I’d love that back.
But the question is why? If no mobs ever casted anything then its not needed. You only want it because its designed that way in abundance.
I think that’s a content design problem, not a class/spec problem.
Because just as you mentioned, its not an issue in PvP because that content does not hinge around needing back to back interrupts.
Design the content differently and it wont be an issue.
I see this as a case of the correct solution and the easiest solution. The easier solution is to do as you suggest. But as IU stated, I think that’s lazy. The correct solution is to design content that expands that narrow and abundantly used forms of CC to combat the most common types of situations.
I mean, I know what I am saying is wishful thinking as I have seen no reason to think they will be more diverse in the content they are creating in regards to how players approach it. So that’s why I have my opinion on how things should be vs what they currently are. But if we are not having that conversion then nothing gets changed… just like how it took so long for the cracks and flaws with Voidform to finally be addressed now. It would never happen if it wasn’t discussed in great detail.
I recall this.
Things like that are fine to have as additional options. Just not baseline. Baseline in the context of its the 1st point talent getting that effect. I think you need to have additional points used to get that effect. Or maybe a switch talent etc.
Remove last word, give me this. In fact put the old last word talent back in the PvP talents section (SWD below 20% silences for 3 seconds).
Now your just asking for trouble lol. I would love that.
But I don’t want to allow warriors to silence me from throw weapon like they had in MoP. That crap was toxic AF lol.
Could there be room in the priest design space for an upgrade to mind soothe? Call it soothing presence and make it allow pack skips in m+ similar to mass stealth.
If I remember correctly that didn’t even survive a full patch, let alone an expansion.
I went away early on… I think I was doing twinking a lot. Came back after throne of thunder.
So my memory on the endgame MoP is a bit spotted lol.
Remember Mind Soothe works on dragonkin…
Usually the niche aspect of the talent would bother me but I’d say Mind Soothe made a timely reappearance this expac given DF.
What if it made all allies in the radius appear as friends to enemies for the duration and it functioned exactly like a mass stealth for pack skips though.
That would be broken AF lol.
Fun idea though.
I think it would need to have a cooldown attached to it in that implementation. Not sure how I feel about that.
At least in Classic, I have a quick keybind for Mind Soothe to bypass mobs throughout a dungeon for example… prime one being Black Rock Depths. I can solo my way throughout most of that place without aggroing purely because of Mind Soothe lol.