And I believe they recognized that at least Holy has too many buttons as well. But as has happened before, then there’s no time to fix it until later.
Be that as it may, the feedback is what it is.
If it were as you say, then the talent trees should offer more choice nodes where you can choose between an active ability or a passive effect, but there are only 2 of such talent choices in the Holy tree!
It’s not a design philosophy of Blizzard to just inflate the number of buttons. If anything, then it’s a hard lesson learned from the past that going down that road leads to unnecessary complexity and undesired homogenization.
More buttons is in fact not better. That’s the lesson Blizzard inferred from Cataclysm where classes started having so many buttons that everyone could do everything. And that sure as hell wasn’t popular.
I also don’t buy the notion that retail WoW was dumbed down, regardless of what the critics claimed during the WoD pruning, as if more buttons for the sake of more buttons is always a good thing. That argument always struck me as ridiculous.
Either way, I’m simply concluding that I need almost 4 full action bars for all my abilities on my Holy Priest. That is completely unacceptable and totally out of proportions for WoW’s class design. It’s more than twice as much as some other specs have!
I know Blizzard recognizes it too, so they’ll inevitably have to do something about it, so it’s not like I’m saying anything that hasn’t been acknowledged in the Beta. But playing it on Live I am surprised at just how much there is and how daunting it is to play with.
Holy has too many buttons and excess versatility.
Shadow has too much rotational and mechanical complexity with single-target and AoE.
Discipline is still a high barrier-to-entry spec.
And Priest in general has too many abilities that are either lackluster or without purpose in modern WoW but exist anyway because they have existed for 18 years.
This is something I also say: the more the merrier.
What I meant by dumbing down is not of the whole game but of the class design. And yes, things like Misery is dumbing down the game. I still use it and maybe it does make sense in a modern fast-paced version of the game, but I’m not sure I agree with the design. Things like removing shadow word pain from the holy spec, like you said, that is absolutely unthinkable in my head.
I prefer whenever WoW gives us the opportunity to outperform someone else because we were able to select the proper ability to press at a certain situation. I believe bad design happens when everyone is able to perform exactly the same because there isn’t any chance to “fail”.
All an all, we can just agree to disagree, I just think the way you peremptorily describe your demands is a little short sighted. Remember that not everyone plays the game like you do.
My counterpoint is that Blizzard should stay true to the design philosophy they committed themselves to in the first place.
That’s better than constantly swinging the pendulum from one extreme to the other. All that does is confuse people about whether the game is for them or not.
Ergo I feel like it’s worth giving them some feedback, reminding them of their own teachings. Something about concentrated coolness. Something about high accessibility. Something about needless complexity. And so forth.
And I don’t think that’s short-sighted at all. On the contrary, that’s been what Blizzard themselves have previously heralded as long-term thinking, that classes couldn’t just get more and more abilities all the time, because then there wouldn’t be any design space to add anything in the future. Wise words, I think.
And when a Holy Priest has almost 4 action bars worth of abilities, then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to tell Blizzard that it may be a little bit excessive.
Likewise, when Shadow gets a talent tree full of choices that are functionally the same, then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to tell Blizzard that it may be a little unnecessarily complex.
And when Discipline continues to be a spec where some people say the design is overpowered and awesome, and others say is confusing and punishing, then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to tell Blizzard that it may be a little bit inaccessible.
That all strikes me as reasonable observations, as opposed to simply decreeing that more buttons are always better.
My priest is glitched. I talented into dark twilight corruption which gives me dark reprimand instead of penance. I got rid of the talent, but I still have dark reprimand instead of penance. IDK how to get my penance back .
Edit: I got it back with talenting into shadow covenant and twilight corrputioon again, and pressing shadow covenant. When shadow covenant expired, I got my penance back. Still, this is a very concerning glitch.
Was it missing from your spellbook or just your bars? Two of my characters do not not update their bars until I update the next thing, which then needs another tile updated to show.
That said, it’s not the first I hear of stuck talents when going from the starter build, glad you got it to update.
It was not in my spellbook either and not even restarting the game helped. Also when I typed /cast penance, my char casted dark reprimand. And btw, it was not the starter build either, I talented into it myself to try it out and then i did not get my penance back after getting rid of the talent.
Overall though, I really like the new holy and disc priest talents. I am especially looking forward to playing disc. My 1st disappointment is prayer of mending for disc - I love this spell but it is so useless for disc. Please make it apply atonement, atleast for the 1st target, or make it apply atonement on all targets for like 3 seconds. My 2nd disappointment is the trinity talent for pvp - feels really bad to play now when PWS has a CD. I am happy that Divine Aegis is back. Its bubble time! And renew as the new main atonement applicator is just perfect (the renew crits also trigger DA = more bubbles, yey).
Priest Class tree still needs some actual changes for utility etc
Vault of Heavens / any interrupt / Spectral Guise / Rework Void Tendrils / Remove or Rework VE / Rework Dominate Mind / Uncap Psych Scream
Disc there is also so much unfinished / unviable stuff
Add back Mind Sear (only took it from us so shadow could get a new version?)
Add back Shadowmend (or bake it into Shadow Covenant)
Buff Mindgames (it has a -50% dmg modifier for Disc it does nothing…)
Buff / Rework Contrition
Buff Mind Blast
Rework / Remove Shadow Covenant ( Could be Shadowmend/MindSear stuff)
Rework/Remove TC aka Shadow Penance (completetly unusable its a loss pick)
Stolen Psyche sucks cause Mind Blast is too weak
Rework/Remove Aegis of Wrath boring talent that is way too strong
Make Lights Wrath more viable with less Targets
Mindbender needs like a 200% buff to even be useable
Right side of Disc priest with Mindbender talents is just unusable overall
Add a talent that makes Atonement cap at 5? targets but gives it back its old 0.65 modifier or just increases atonement healing by something don’t really care there is 100 options.
I wish they’d address the shadow concerns as fast as they did with discipline.
Having to wait for shadow crash or mind bender to come off cd whilst everyone else is pumping in aoe is really terrible gameplay. And who thought it’d be a good idea to turn Mind Sear into an insanity spender with pitiful damage? It really needs some tuning to make it worth using.
Oh yeah, we asked for an end to searing nightmare and MS was collateral damage, I don’t know why they removed it from Disc instead of calling the new thing SN since it’s an aoe spender.
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