Future Changes to Healing & Priest Tree Balance

Somewhat related and somewhat different. I figured I’d lump both of these topics into the same post.

I wanted to start talking about healing because it’s on our radar. But we are considering some major changes, so it is going to be a long term design and not something we’ll patch in a week or two. I also said “consider.” We’re in a brainstorming phase and we might not end up making major changes. It could be something close in scope to the tanking changes this time around, or it could be bigger or smaller than that. As I’ve pointed out, there weren’t too many tanks who said that everything was perfect and they were happy (though there were some). There are many more priests who are scared of a major healing change and would prefer things stay as they are. We need to evaluate their opinions as well. It may not be worth a change at all. That’s why this thing will take time. (src)

Priests feel they have a lot of mandatory talents as well, so GC posted some information on what Blizzard’s plans are for priests and their trees being balanced in the future.

There is definitely a large gray area here. Some talents are mandatory because they are really cool talents. Making it less mandatory could involve nerfing them, which isn’t what most players are asking for.

What we would like to do with all of the trees is give you options where possible. Cookie-cutter builds may always be a reality in a game like this to some extent, but ideally you could get the core of what you need to be competitive (in dps, CC, healing or whatever) and have a few talent points left over for fun talents.

Now I’m being candid here, which is a little risky, because mean players tend to turn it into “ZOMG they are shipping the game before it’s perfect.” But I think rational people realize that with a game the scope of WoW and a team as creative as ours, there are always more things you want to do. So there is the preamble. If this comes back to bite me, I’ll just be less forthcoming with our thought process in the future.

We do think there are parts of the priest tree that are too bloated, and we aren’t 100% happy with some of the decisions you’re forced to make. Getting Meditation is one. Another is trading off Imp DS or Guardian Spirit. This involves a major change to probably all three trees though, so it’s probably not going to happen before LK goes live. We are trying to minimize sweeping changes right now, just to minimize introducing potential bugs into the game. But it’s something you will probably start seeing before too long, perhaps in bits and pieces or perhaps not. A lot of that will be informed on how priests do in PvP and PvE once Lich King ships as well. (src)