The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Ego’s Opinion on Priest Racials
by Vonya
As most of you probably know by now, Priest Racials are being dramatically changed. Some appear to be disappearing (this has not been confirmed, but they are rather pointedly not mentioned in any of the announcements I’ve seen) and others are being given to ALL priests.
Over at World of Matticus, they’ve had three different posts on the subject, ranging from the original announcement, the Twitterati reaction (if that word isn’t in full use by the end of the year, it’ll be a crying shame), and Wyn’s personal thoughts on the matter.
To many people, this is a Big Deal.
My opinion? Summed up in a single word, all I can say is “Overdue”.
Do you remember the outcry when Draenei priests were given Fear Ward? Some of you do, I’m sure. How many dwarf priests cried foul, exclaimed bitterly that they had rolled a race they hated just so they could be the “best” priest?
How many blog posts have there been about the priest racials, weighing them and grading them, telling you that if you picked Night Elf, you were crippling yourself? Grace of Elune? Increasing dodge and agility? Are you SERIOUS? A tank would sell his second-favorite grandmother for that ability, but a priest?
The truth of the matter was that the priest racials were unbalanced, and ridiculously so. I think that they were intended to be neat little spells that would give someone a little extra something for choosing a particular race, and what they ended up doing is penalizing some and forcing others into decisions they might regret later.
Personally? I loved my dwarf priest, with her propeller braids. HOWEVER, I do think that dwarf women don’t look as nice in robes as many of the other classes, and yes, that mattered to me. I absolutely fell in love with the drae from the very first screenshots released of them. I knew I was rerolling months before Burning Crusade came out, regardless of the priest racials they were given, and even if it meant I wouldn’t have Fear Ward anymore.
In the end, Drae priests pulled the long straw when it came to racials. Fear Ward AND Symbol of Hope? If all the things that were ever priest racials were put into a pot and every priest could only pick two, I guarantee those two would be the MOST selected abilities.
And then Fear Ward got nerfed and given to everyone, but THAT’s a totally different story.
I suppose the point of all my rambling is that nobody should have been penalized for the race they chose, and that is what was happening with priest racials. No raid leader should ever have to look at two bright priest faces and choose one over the other because a racial might make a difference in a battle. Oh, you rolled a troll? Too bad, looks like you don’t get to raid this week.
It’s an issue of balance.
Some of the racials that are disappearing are going to cause a lot of hubbub in the PvP community, and I know that I cannot comment on that perspective at all, so I’m not even going to try. I have never used Chastise, but that doesn’t make it worthless to the gaming community as a whole.
Does this decision homogenize the priest community?
Yes and no. It levels the playing field a little, and makes some very nice spells and abilities available to ALL priests.
It’s how you USE what you’ve been given that sets you apart from the priests around you. A bad priest without Symbol of Hope is not suddenly going to become a great priest just because of that spell, but their group is still going to benefit from them using it.
This, of course, raises the question of whether or not non-priest racials are coming under scrutiny as well. And before you start your outcry of denial on THAT front, ask yourself whether human rogues and orc hunters really and truly make sense to be better at what they do than the other races? Some of the regular racials aren’t just an extra boost to Jewelcrafting, you know.
September 16th, 2008
I for one am saddened to see them go, because they brought such a unique flavour to the class. There was always something particularly *Forsaken,* to me, about dropping a Devouring Plague on someone which I really appreciated. It was certainly a matter of balance, but Blizzrd chose to scrapt it altogether rather than reform it (or, to be fair, to *continue* to reform it).
Personally, I’d like to see each class have a racial or two… something in the training and upbringing that differentiates, say, a Human Warrior from an Orc one aside from just the colours of their pixels.
And the racials indeed already have come under scrutiny, but not for eradication. Rather, there will be a lot of chances for Wrath. Humans get a feign death, Trolls get the ‘Voodoo Shuffle,’ and we Forsaken… well, we got the nerf bat. *grin*
September 16th, 2008
[...] Vonya from The Egotistical Priest says the change is “overdue” [...]
September 16th, 2008
Chastise were always so fun at them after-hours parties, though…
September 16th, 2008
I take offense at the idea that Trolls are worse than Undead. Shadowgaurd is amazing. Especially once you get in T6 content where everything and it’s mother tosses AoE around. On Archimonde, I usually have a 3 stack of Shadow Weaving before I’m even within casting range.
September 16th, 2008
I don’t know why people keep saying undead are better then trolls!
Trolls are tha best!
“Ahhh we have devouring plague. We give moar damage…” yadda yadda…
I have shadowguard and hex of weakness…. In fights with lot of AoE i can give more damage with shadowguard then you with devouring plague. And if no one on the group has a Mortalstrike ability, i have hex of weakness. And trolls will always look better then undead. We have tusks >]
I must say, Blizzard must make Shadowguard a 11 point talent on shadow tree and Hymn of Hope a 11 point talent on disc, as Desperate prayer is on holy tree. That’ would make a lot better for me. and PLZ, PLZ make talents that improve PW:P to improve DP! :]
Troll has moar regeneration by spirit. We pwnz.
September 16th, 2008
I’m sorry, but when you have 9 million accounts open you can come up with more creative ways to balance things than “okay, take it all away”. It is one way to balance things out, yes, but it isn’t the way that people across the world pay $15/mo for. It’s like how the answer to a few pets being broken was to normalize them all, why not instead of just taking things away don’t they actually use some of their huge sums of money to grab a few people from MiT and just figure out a mathematically sound way to enhance or create spells that work off the same scale and/or percentage for encounters that will make them all somewhat viable.
The fun in a video game will always be the quirks to it, otherwise we should all just play numbers. 1+1=2 is what it comes down to at a certain point anyway, and I feel that the more they take away from the individualism of the game (IE: buffs), the more that the game becomes a plastic blob that provides little of the things that make us go “UGH, ___!!” or “Yes, ___!!” It will all be the same.
Uniformity is not your friend. At least, it isn’t mine. That being said, I don’t see how it doesn’t homogenize the priest pool. Playstyle is apparent in all classes, so it’s not like priests alone will be put on a “differing scale’ because they happen to like casting GH Rank 2 over something else. There’s good and there’s bad, but now the good and bad will all be pulling from the same pool.
Why, for example, would a Draenei know how to cast a devouring plague?
September 16th, 2008
I don’t know how much this change will effect me. I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the talent changes, but in terms of the racial skills? I’m bad, I rarely remembered to use my priest racials. Or I would cringe and hesitate, preparing to devour one of my own buffs for a little bit of mana.
With all the changes they’re throwing at me, my innate cynicism keeps being tripped up by the fact that I’ll be having to learn how to play all over again with these new toys. Even the gear will be weirdly different, due to the merge into spellpower. New toys is always awesomeface.
The concept of troll witchdoctors and undead priests, though - just from a lore background, the idea of those two characters is full of win. How could I show a preference?
September 16th, 2008
Well there’s not much to be angry about this change. Priest racials had terrible parity. I suppose we should have seen this coming with the Fear Ward nerf.
I just… mourn, I suppose that’s the best word for it… a significant aspect of the game that allowed players to own and toy with an incredibly small amount of the lore of their choice. I say this as an “underprivileged” Troll priest.
I mean, anyone with enough patience to read quest text realizes that the story of WoW establishes that each race of people has a distinct culture and community regardless of their shared universe. While warriors seem to learn the same martial prowess and rogues develop similar tactics across party lines, it was An Interesting Thing that the class that had the most involvement with their race’s culture and community had a set of race-specific tricks. Trolls had Loa, Night Elves had Elune, and we discovered that the Light was known by different names to everyone. It gave Fortitude to the mythology, harr harr.
So I’m not going to cry over this; I’ve said my piece. I only wish that Blizzard would introduce more race/class specific quests and content.
********
Yes, it angers me that my Tauren’s Berzerker stance has a Dwarven face. And my Druid’s treeform is indistinguishable from the Horde’s. And that my Shaman’s totems look nothing like his cousins’ in Stranglethorn. These are little things, but a little more time in the art department and subsequent coding would shake the pebbles out from my shoes.
September 16th, 2008
Wish I could take credit for the term Twitterati. Alas, its a term that originated from Guy Kawasaki himself!
September 16th, 2008
I tend to think that blizzard has hit a bit of a wall when it comes to priests, they spent so much time putting effort into the other classes that they really forgot us.
Now that time is getting short they start looking at the #s and realized that all that work on many of the other classes was making things imbalanced. So the short of it all is that everyone gets another dot (well us face melting types atleast), we all get a shot a mana regeneration ability and for some ungodly reason another aoe i cant get to
My 51 point talent is Dispersion, if that doesnt show how little attention they have paid to priests I dont know what is.
In the end Ill take that extra dot on a much more regular basis and spend less on it to boot. I didn’t loose anything special since I was already a card carying undead face melting machine. For the record the will of the forsaken was the deciding choice, since nothing is more fun that doing dps while the boss chases the tank around the room
Well maybe healing that tank since the regular healer is also running around the room 
September 17th, 2008
The problem is, it doesn’t actually balance the races - it’s just different areas that are unbalanced. Attributes are still determined by race, and with humans getting “The Human Spirit” (on top of Diplomacy) it’s hard to justify rolling anything other than a human priest (well, RP, but we’re not talking about that here).
September 17th, 2008
@Tal
By that logic, there would similarly be no reason to roll anything other than a gnome mage/warlock for the INT bonus or a Tauren warrior/druid for the health bonus. The bonuses are meant to be just that, something nice to have but not critical to have, a bonus. The way the priest racials were set up, it WAS critical that there was a dwarf or draenei priest (pre-Fear Ward change) and undead shadow priests were like unto gods. The human spirit bonus, while nice, won’t be game-breaking in any way. Human preists won’t have to stack as much spirit as the rest, much like how human (combat sword/mace) rogues don’t have to stack as much expertise.
September 18th, 2008
As a dwarf priest, I’m in favour of the changes. I rolled the best priest race and watched it turn into one of the worst. I would have rolled a draenei, but they weren’t available at the time. I refuse to reroll my priest every time Blizz change the racials!
The key issue here is I cannot respec my race, and I certainly cannot respec my faction allegiance. A lot of people rolled priests picking the race they thematically liked, under the fair assumption that similar to every other class in the game, race would have at most a minor impact on endgame performance. Even the elitist jerks of WoW 1.0 could not have known fearward would become so important on Nefarian, or that one day AOE mana regen would be available.
Racial flavour is available to RPers through their selection of baseline spells and spec, if you don’t think devouring plague is appropriate for a night elf, don’t cast it! Hell you shouldn’t be shadow spec or male either
To sum up - until we can respec our race, racial abilities must be cosmetic or trivial.
September 23rd, 2008
[...] Ego’s Thoughts [...]
October 2nd, 2008
[...] at The Egotistical Priest talks about Priest Racials and raises some good points. October 02nd, 2008 | Category: Healing [...]