1. Faster recast on dog. Since so many AA's can be tied to his survival and because he has a tendency to get killed by adds or aoe auto attack despite being aoe immune, can we please have a much faster recast on dog. Also on the initial AA to get the dog, instead of wis and stamina, can additional aa's there please give multi-attack or increase to-hit or damage. Wis and stamina are worthless and I bet no one puts more than 1 aa there. 2. SF end choice for the Int line is basically worthless with all the casting speed out there. Please make this something fun like .5 double spell attack per rank or maybe an additional aoe for those rare times we get to dps groups of mobs. 3. In the TSO priest line let us use "priest stances" while in our healing stance. These are fun abilities and giving us the ability to use them while doing our primary job would in no way unbalance things. It would also give the dog a little more utility if you chose that stance. 4. Make spiritual circle aoe immune so that it doesn't immediately get one shotted against raid content. 5. Do something with crystallize soul. Make it trigger on casted heals not on deaths, this would give it some utility in raids. You can adjust the recast so it's not OP. Right now, the most you will get it against many nameds is once. Considering the length of many of the fights it is basically useless. Make this at least as good as "Aspect of Purity" etc. Anyone else have any? These are minor changes that I think would make the class more fun without giving Defilers an unfair advantage.
1. dog absolutly needs help. I find the dog spec damn near useless, since its dead 99% of the time, takes forever to cast, then just gets 1 shotted anyways. 2. ROA - put 5 AA into so and so - make ROA group wide - yay for everyone - with a longer recast of course - say 3 minutes. just brainstorming. personally, I see nothing wrong with ROA, and I find it extremely helpful when playing my troub, and getting ROA from time to time. 3. definatly seems some redoing. "on death" basically means its never available on most raid content, unless that content has alot of adds. good idea, needs tweaking to make it more versatile.
Kunaak wrote: I'd like to point out one thing. If your dog is dead 99% of the time, then you don't know how to position him, simple as that. My dog dies as well but rarely. True some fights are indeed a pain for the dog, but most of them my dog does not die even once. I am talking both raids and group instances. You tend to see when the big aoe's come, take him out, send him back in after ( althout this makes no sense since the aoe block only triiger on the dog attacks , so I'd rather have him dead after he blocked an aoe for example ). I use this strat in RH group instance, on the names, where everybody needs to run out or raid fights where thwe same applies. Not much of a problem. If the dog dies, I can put 3 wards up, deathward, single and group and then recast the dog. I usually have enough time for that or I interrupt, cure, ward again and then recast. Faster recast would be nice, I don't dispute that, but don't try to justify it with 99% of the time the dog being dead cause that simply is not true.
- I'd like to see soul ward allowed to crit -- our ST ward already can hit for 18k with the right buffs (usable every 3.5 seconds or whatever and no health cost...) while soul ward, an endline AA ability still only hits for 25k or so but also sacrifices 90% of the health pool and on a 5 minute reuse (so 2.5 mins with max reuse) iirc. This ability is already becoming obsolete in this expansion, and it will only continue to get worse if it isn't changed to be affected by any blue stats. - Spiritual Circle should be AoE immune (along with dumbfires and all the other temporary pets like this that other classes have) - RoA should be castable on self. If we get any future AA's modifying this ability, something like additional crit bonus to RoA would be cool. - Crystallize Essence while much better than its original state could use a little work. It should proc X times per minute on any spell/combat attack.. the reuse already keeps it in check.
I would have to check again but I dont remember seeing a stun/stifle/knockback/interupt imun for us. Would be nice since most of the other healers get some sort of it. Yes we get Voice but that does not work agains interupts its a cure for stun/stifle/mez,
For starters, I see our class as an ultra defensive based priest with a secondary specialty of defensive debuffs that lower the damage potential of our enemies. I want to stay primarily defensive/healing oriented as a priority and leave the offensive/dps utility to mystics for the most part. If we must get any offensive utility, then something caster-based would be preferable since mystics fill the "melee utility" niche of the shamans. 1. INT line - needs work overall. The Sentinel's Fate endline for the INT tree is an utter joke for casual as well as raiding shaman. Any shamans >80 will be hard pressed to justify increasing the casting speed of hostile spells. Perhaps turn it into a debuff enhancement to Scourge which decreases the offensive capabilities of the target for a short time. Introducing some sort of ability that reduces the effectiveness of interrupts would be a nice addition to this line--perhaps add a percentage chance for the group to shrug off interrupts to the Immunities ability under this tree to make it more useful in a PVE situation. Enhancements like the above would cause shamans to pause and consider this line as a viable alternative to the others we have available. 2. Shaman dogs (and all pets, for that matter) need to be made immune to frontal AOE melee attacks. I can keep him alive in around 90% of raid fights all the way up to clearing wing 2 in the Hole, but it's aggravating when he gets demolished sneaking around to the wrong side of a mob and I miss it. If the changes for summoner pets and shared stats trickle down to affect our dog pets, I believe that will be a huge step in the right direction for dog survivability so I can't wait to see how that might pan out (critical aura of warding procs and potency affecting it!) 3. Critical Bonus & Wards - Please allow critical bonus fully affect wards. Keep the base critical bonus of wards (without gear or AA's) at 15% to preserve the original disadvantage that was originally placed on wards. As gear gets better and the level cap goes up, wards are going to fall further and further behind other types of heals very quickly. If wards need to be rebalanced to offset the result of such a change then so be it, but as it stands halving the critical potential of wards is the wrong path for us to go down in the long term. 4. More defensive utility - We're among the worst of the priests for giving people in our groups any sort of utility aside from our healing ability. The critical bonus addition to Shroud of Armor was a nice touch, but it felt lackluster. I'd like to see us geared more towards pure defensive utility, with more abilities to emphasize our role as a defensive priest. Mystics should remain the offensive utility shaman--I don't want to get clones of their abilities. Perhaps add more opportunities to improve Tendrils of Horror (defensive ward proc or damage reduction proc) or improve Invective so that it adds a worthwhile debuff to the proc that lowers the damage output of the target. 5. Spiritual Circle - Like others have mentioned, make this and other dumbfire pets AoE immune (or give us some AA enhancement to give the pet that ability). 6. (all classes) Revamp the majority of the "improves casting speed/reuse/percentage-based-effect" AA lines so that these enhancements will provide a beneficial upgrade to the ability in question. As the level cap increases these AA's will only get less and less useful as it becomes easier to cap out the reuse and casting speed on abilities. Currently I can get away with dropping little to no points in most of the abilities that drop the reuse/casting speed to several abilities. 7. Soulward - Yes, allow this ability to critical and potency to affect it. My single target wards are almost trumping the ward that I output when I click Soulward. It's still an excellent emergency ability, but has gotten much weaker as itemization fails to increase it. This will only continue to get worse and worse as itemization improves our other heals/wards. 8. Ritual of Alacrity - Consider making this group wide with a hit to the reuse of the ability. Like everything else that increases casting/reuse speed, this ability will become less potent as more abilities become capped out due to itemization. Adding more incentive to spec into it would be great, like potency or crit bonus. 9. Crystallize Essence - I agree with what other posters have said. The upgrade to this ability was very nice, but the proc mechanic is still terrible. It should have a small chance of procing on offensive attacks (beneficial would be a bit overpowered) with possibly a small debuff component which hinders the target's offensive capability to maintain the lore aspect (drawing from the target's spirit to create an object)--hey, there's some more defensive utility for us! Keep in mind that this ability is already raid wide so changing the proc mechanic would not suddenly make having multiple defilers overly desireable compared to now. 10. Some sort of improvement to curse cures via AA's.
Possibly change Invective to become a power tap proc for the target instead of or in addition to it being the victim uses more power and costs health to cast spells/abilites? To change Crystallize Soul to proc a Crystallized Essence on combat hit or spell attack would potentially be overpowered. You'd would have to have it take say 8% of the player's health or 6 seconds stifle or 4% of player's health and power for combat hit or spell attack to be viable. I also agree with being able to make the Spiritual Circle aoe immune with AA points. Perhaps change Rabid Hostility to Enhance: Immunites. Enhance: Immunites would have a (say 1%-10%)chance to proc a 6 second fear immunity, stifle immunity, or stun immunity when feared, stifled, or stunned.
