Wrath of the Lich King has been out for over over a month now, and there have been a lot of comments about it being the “easy” expansion.

In one way I have to agree, since I have had my priest at level 80 for three weeks of the five week since launch, and have cleared basically all of the five man content, and some of the ten man content. But I disagree that this is a bad thing. In fact I think the move to opening up the end game to more people is a good thing. It will give more players the chance to experience the content that developers spent time creating and users paid for.

Anyway, I wanted to sum up some thoughts I have on the expansion thus far.

• The new class seems to have been a success, at least based on the number of people that already have Death Knights at 80 and are still playing them.
• The new continent (zone) look and feel is fantastic, and flows together very well. I think these are some of the best looking places in the game.
• The quests are varied enough to keep things interesting, and the story lines found in those quests are compelling.
• The five man-instances seem to flow very well and do not seem to require nearly as much of a time commitment.
• The “championing” mechanic is Great!. It gives tabbards a game mechanic, and allows players to run whatever instance they want.
• The use subtle and dramatic use of phasing, cut scenes, and short vinettes to help tell the story of the expansion , is where I think Blizzard really out did themselves. Whenever the Lich King appears, I stop what I am doing to watch and listen; normally this is a hard thing to get players (who are wanting only to level up) to do.

Of course with all the changes that came to the classes with the pre-wrath patch and wrath, also brought alot of balance issues. The two that affect me the most are; Hunters DPS being way too strong, and priest CoH apparently being so good that its the only spell preists in raids cast.

Since I have not played my hunter much, I can not really comment on the incomming changes except to say I wish I had spent a bit more time leveling my hunter before the changes 🙂

The priest change is HUGE. From a design perspective I completely understand not wanting players to only press one button in a fight; I get it really I do. Though I think taking the simple route of adding a cool down to Circle of Healing was a very lame, and non-creative way to deal with the problem.

Did I use CoH a lot? In 5-mans not much, in 10-mans more (I am not sure how two priest are supposed to heal some fights without it) and in 25-mans all the time.

Was it over powered? Yes in 25 mans I believe it way too strong, and with highly geared priests the math makes it a top choice in many 10 man fights. The key there is “highly geared”.

So if I believe it is OP, then why am I upset? I am upset, because I feel that being able to spam heal several party members at once, was what made priests worth taking on raids. My job just became a lot harder, a seriously a lot harder.

Luckily for priests the Druids also got hit with a similar nerf, without which there would be no-reason to take a preist when you have a druid available.

What I fear now is that the way less squishy holy pallys and resto shaman will become choice healers for raids. I know my fears are unfounded, yet. But if when our guild can no longer 2heal 10man naxx, because I am not pulling my weight, I will be very sad. And more so since shadow priest DPS is so bad right now.

What I would have done?

If I had to make a simple easy change, it would have been a 3 second cooldown. I think that would have been plenty to slow the spam rate, if that was not enough then move to six seconds.

I would have rather addressed the issue more creatively. The problem was CoH was too pleasing to a preiest in 25 man raids, instead of addressing that by making CoH less appealing, make our other heals more appealing. From what see and hear preist healing throughput is the what priests are looking for. So with that hear are some quick ideas off the top of my head:

• Change the renew glyph. Give it more healing without the lowered duration. (this might help fix the fact that renew is no longer as effecient as it once was)
• Add a new glyph for GH: target recieves a buff which increases all healing done to it by 1% for the next 5 seconds, can stack 5 times.
• Add a talent that that adds a short small hot to the target of any FH or GH, which heals for a % of the initial heal.
• Make Prayer of Healing AoE raid wide and not group only.
• Add a new rank for Hymn of Hope that restores more mana
• Create a new spell a Priest casts on a target (target gains a nice light effect over them) and then then for the duration of that spell that target recieves a portion of all other healing done by that priest’s GH, FL, and PoH. My first thought is a 2 minute cool down, 20 second duration, 25% of healing done.
• [edit] Thought of one more. An AoE shielding spell. Basically a variation of PW:Shield. Call it Prayer of Shielding. Make it work like CoH mechanics for targeting. All targets get a shield and a debuff that keep them from being shielded again for X seconds

Would some of those be OP, probably but that could be worked out with some balance. But all of those are more creative ways to make priest players look at something other than the CoH spell. I know if I can make such a list then the Blizzard designers can, but they seem to be way more focused on making tanking classes for more fun and DPS classes balanced than they are on actually addressing the root problems of healing classes.

*sigh* Maybe in an expansion.