Yesterday was a Warcrack patch. And, yes, I was terror-stricken. (Please don’t let it be my class … please don’t let it be my class.) Even though Blizzard SAID it was just extended maintenance to improve performance, we all know by now that’s not how things work in the gaming world.
So who was the lucky one?
Primarily, priests and druids. From my reading, seems like they nerfed the fuck out of that line of spells (soothe/pacify), basically rendering them useless.
Speaking as a player that got out of the priest gig as fast as I could in Warcrack, that is just sad. Maybe priests are enjoyable (in ANY way) after level 20, but I can report that pre-20, that class is a bitch to play. Priests are already hard to come by for the tougher instanced dungeons; we’ve been making do with kidnapped paladins.
All I can figure is that Blizzard didn’t like priests and druids soothing (pacifying) their way through dungeons, so that was that. Which is stupid; it’s not like this game is raining gold and uber items. My Auction House has had a total of four epic items listed this week. Presumably some epic items were looted that are being used by the looter, but ffs, four epic items is a flood?
My asshat e-buds were taunting me this week, trying to put the fear of Nerf into me for my class. As I explained to them, I’m like a fucking necromancer when Abashi was playing his EQ necro. No way in hell is my class going to get nerfed anytime soon.
They still have the paladins and shamen to, ahem, address. Once that happens, I’ll start shivering in my boots, but until then, I’m living the high life.
My condolences to the priests and druids. That shit ain’t right.
Never having played a priest or a druid high enough to get them, can someone please tell me how these spells worked before this “nerf” and why this change is going to bring about the end of the world?
I think they changed it on three elements:
– It was an instant -> now it’s a 1.5 cast time spell
– It allowed to charm every type of monster -> now only on humanoids
– It was used to avoid aggro -> now it aggro on fails
On my agenda this is indeed a full nerf, in the true meaning of the word. I always defined a nerf not as a simple tweak of a class. A nerf is a basic change of a skill that forces the player to play in a different way.
In general it’s exactly this point that the players hate: it’s a change resulting in a different way to play that is perceived as less fun by the players.
From what I read the spell was used when running to instant cast it on monsters and so avoid them.
Now you cannot run because you need to stop and cast it, you cannot use to avoid aggro because it’s exactly what it produces and it will work only on a certain type of mobs.
It’s basically reverted. The previous use is completely unapplicable now.
It’s not as if the damn priests and druids were running around with multiple free lives like another class that comes to mind.
Seems that there’s bigger fish to fry right now. *shrug*
Even worse is that the spells were only truly useful (read: exploitable) in ONE instance, Mauradon. Can’t have priests or druids skipping content, only rogues are allowed to skip their way to the good stuff.
BTW, love the blog Foton! I’ve missed your ramblings ever since you left Eclipse. Who were you there anyway? Some of us still wonder.
If indeed the spells “were only truly useful (read: exploitable) in ONE instance” as Bender says, than this does not seem like a big deal to me. If these spells are big part of who a priest or druid is than it certainly sucks to have a nerf. Truth be told, only time will tell if it was a good change or a bad change. If the spells did not work as they intended in the design, well I support the change. If they made the change to fix a broken instance design, bad move Blizzard.
As a long-time player of a Feral Intendant in AC2, I can fully understand how it feels to have a class changed fundamentally after you have been playing it for a good while. In fact, it happened several times for that class. But still, I was able to adapt my play style and find the new “style” for the class. Doesn’t change the fact that it sucked at the time though.
Ah, I should have been clearer. The spells were only overpowered in that one instance because of terrible mob placement in the design. Outside of that, they were very balanced little spells that served as nothing more than an ‘ease of travel’ buff, as they were intended to be. As they are now after the nerf they are pointless since the very act of casting them defeats the purpose they exist for.
Up til this point i’ve been pleased with how Blizz has handled things. But this nerf smacks of SOE-style “Band-aiding”. SWG had more than it’s share of slashing player abilities to compensate for bad design flaws by developers. I’ve really hoped that Blizz will instead fix the problems rather than slapping a patch on them and hoping it’s “all good” in the end.