What is fun? Let’s hypothetically assume that you’re playing StarCraft (I’ll get back to WoW, I promise). Let’s use a cheat code, power overwhelming (those of you who don’t know, stop reading and play the game). Now you’re invincible, and have super strong attacks. Is this fun? If you’re fighting against a computer, it might be for a little while until the novelty wears off and if you’re playing against another person, I hope you get banned. (But now that I think about some of my friends, this is the only way they know how to play, damn cheat codes devolving game play for noobs *shakes fists*). The fun of cheating aside, let’s assume that instead of being invincible, you just become really hard to kill. Still fun? You still got the pew pews, so probably. Now let’s assume you’re really hard to kill, but your attacks are just normal. Is this fun?
There’s no doubt about the situation I’ve described, that any person would probably win, eventually. However, the general question any game designer should ask, is this fun? What a lot of people confuse for fun is actually being effective at something. In WoW, this concept is no different. To illustrate, this week I’ll have a three part special look at three different types of specs. All are quite effective in some manner, but the fun factor is largely in question. The first spec in review is:
The Discipline Priest
After having much difficulty in season 1, and seeing such low representation in arena, Blizzard decided to find some way to give priests some better tools to compete. The answer? Focused Will. This single talent I would argue is probably one of the worst talents to be implemented for pvp. Let’s not be confused however, this is a highly effective talent. Coupled with increases in resilience, targetable pain suppression, priests became a force to be hit on like a piñata that doesn’t break. (What did you think I was going to say reckoned with? Do you call a brick, a force to be reckoned with?) What ended up happening was that priests became unkillable instant casting machines.
With a decent amount of resilience and stamina, and another healer, (and sometimes not) discipline priests would just be a very stupid target, except for a few melee/purgecentric teams. With a on hit chance to proc that negated some of the healing debuff effects in addition to damage reduction, you would have more fun jumping into a large jar of peanut butter to find a missing wedding ring than trying to attack a discipline priest. At least then you could eat something if you were hungry. Let’s ask the question though, is this fun? To many priests, the obvious and in my opinion the wrong answer, is yes, who wouldn’t have fun not dying?
Lets look at what happens when people don’t die. If an enemy were to target a priest, what would end up happening is the priest would be unable to cast except for throwing around instant casts due to pushback and kicks. The friendly healer would spam heals, and the priest would survive. Aside from jumping around snared until a blessing of freedom landed, the priest would be renewing, prayer of mending, shielding away while the dps attack the priest in futility. The spec is so effective, that priests are often not the targets, which has a very nasty side effect. They have so much time on their hands, they’re usually assist healing, and if healing is covered, they become mana burn fiends (which in turn is not fun for the opposing team). If the play style of a discipline priest is simply standing still and playing cooldown wars with your instant casts while you “take it”, then I would argue that is not fun.
Don’t think this is just some QQ though, let’s be objective in analyzing the priest class. There definitely are weaknesses that warranted a buff to priests, but do these buffs produce a fun play style. Is simply lasting forever fun? The problem with priests, and cloth classes in general is that their survivability against physical and magic damage is different - as it should be. However this gap is so pronounced that Blizzard’s attempt to fix this weaknesses wasn’t to allow the priest with more survivability or on command escape, breathing room skills, or reliable armors, they decided to just make them be so hard to kill, that no one would bother.
This poses a few problems as I already mentioned. The difficulty of killing a discipline priests is so great, that their role of healing is largely diminished, and instead enters the role of the constant mana burner because they aren’t being focused on except for a few teams (which is often why they make horrible 4dps healers). The talent focused will is so focused (pun!), that it is essentially useless UNLESS focused. You might argue that there are other, pvp-centric skills, and you’d be right, but none so narrowly pigeonholed into a specific function. This makes focused will primarily a pvp only talent, much more than any other talent. This skill is essentially worthless in pve, and worthless when not being targeted. A similar skill like natural perfection (when crit, applies a damage reduction buff, and also a passive crit increase) at least has a tacked on passive that allows it to be somewhat useful in pve and isn’t only active when being focused on.
So, what would I, the pseudo designer do? Well, to start you have to analyze the problems rather than just throwing out nerfs or buffs.
PROBLEM: Priests can’t effectively cast spells other than instants when being beat on.
To address this, I would modify focused will so that it is useful, but not godly useful in its only role of being hit on constantly. That is way too specific. To address that problem (just one example, it doesn’t have to be!), you could keep the healing buff, but remove the damage reduction portion. It’s unnecessary and synergizes way too effectively with spell warding and inner fire. Secondly, I would give focused will a secondary effect that is useful regardless of whether the priest would be crit or not. An example would be maybe 30% pushback resistance for heals and damage. This would fit within the flavor of discipline as the damage/heal tree as well as offer pushback resistance to mana burn and smite which is way too easily countered just by simple normal attacks. This change would make priests a more appetizing target, yet give priests the tools to actually heal even if they are being focused on.
PROBLEM: Priests’ lack of escape abilities.
Getting a cast heal is incredibly difficult if you never have breathing room from the kicks and pummels. I think the best way to approach this problem is to retool skills that are essentially gimmick spells such as holy nova (DIE YOU SNAKES!). Add a medium length cool down and give it a secondary effect such as clearing all snares to friendly targets or knocking back enemies. This would give priests added utility such as running through earth bind totems or traps as a team, yet would be within the constraints of the aoe radius and cooldown.
PROBLEM: Priests just do die way too fast (without focused will).
What better way to address physical damage, then to use a skill priests already have! Inner Fire! First off make it undispellable, like the other caster armors. Inner fire already has charges, so there is already a “natural” dispel of just being hit on. With a more reliable armor that isn’t just instantly purged, you don’t need to tack on invincibility status to talents like focused will. Also, in my opinion, I think the whole armor system needs to be redone, or at least scale inner fire’s effectiveness back to pre Burning Crusade status, but now I really am just whining.
That’s it for now. And to emphasize, the main reason for this blog post wasn’t to ask for nerfs for discipline priests. The point is to make you guys conscious of the fact that even though you might be effective at something, is that necessarily “fun” or as fun as it could be if the design were implemented differently? I hope you all enjoyed my first and second post and a reminder that this is part 1 of a 3 part series. Tune in to find out the next class!
If you haven’t noticed from the theme, I’ll generally be focusing my efforts of eloquently QQing to you guys. Or as a blue might say, constructively criticizing pvp systems in WoW. If you guys have any ideas you’d like me to discuss, give me a PM or leave a comment. I have a LOT of experience in pvp, I live and breathe this stuff, so feel free to ask me anything including what race is the coolest (for those of you who read my last post, hint, it’s not Night Elf!).
Very nicely done, imo. "Effectiveness" is much like money in a way: money can’t buy happiness but poverty can sure as $@!% keep it away. Being effective (or in this instance) overly effective is not necessarily fun but being ineffective (totally gimped and/or helpless) is absolutely "unfun".
I liked not only the analysis of the problem for those readers like myself who don’t possess a single HK or honor point, as well as the possible solutions. To my mind, the difference between "crying" and "critiquing" is quite simply that one offers improvements whereas the other is just ... well, crying.
I would be interested to see if any of the current changes in the WotLK trees are aimed at bringing this spec into a more "fun" play style, by your analysis.
Thanks for the post.
Hoji.