Thursday, September 18, 2008

Bless You

This was always a problem for paladin leads in raids, and it still poses a bit of an annoyance going forward in WotLK. For many classes, there is not one optimal blessing that can be cast for blanket coverage, especially now that Blessing of Salvation is gone.

If you have a feral druid, a moonkin, and a resto druid all in a raid, what blessing do you cast? The moonkin and the resto will want wisdom or kings, and the feral will want might or kings, or sanctuary depending on the fight and raid make-up. If you have a holy, ret, and prot paladin in your raid, each of them will want something different as well! Same goes for death knights (DPS vs. tank), warriors (fury/arms vs. prot), and shaman (enhancement vs. resto/ele).

Sure, this was a problem before, but with an expansion coming soon, there is/was an opportunity to address this nagging issue. As it stands, paladins must cast their greater blessings and then update certain people of each class/role with regular blessings. Most other buffs are group-based and generic - the priest who casts Prayer of Fortitude casts it on a group, not a class. In addition, Prayer of Fortitude is a blanket stamina boost. The only buff that a paladin can cast that is effective for everyone regardless of class/role is Blessing of Kings, and it's only available through talents.

What I'm trying to say here is simple. Perhaps, and I'm just throwing this out there, Blizzard should move away from class-based blessings and devote a little time to planning out a more efficient blessing method. It doesn't make sense to cast a blanket Blessing of Wisdom on your three druids if one of them can't benefit from it. There's got to be a better way.

6 comments:

Argent said...

ZOMGBuffs is an addon which helps a ton with this -- it can automatically figure out classes/specs to a large degree, does the "blessing is expiring" warning like PallyPower, but also allows you to override greater blessings with normal (10-minute) blessings on a player-by-player basis.

It can still be annoying to have to optimize your blessings on a player-by-player basis, but at the same time, it provides a lot more power and utility from one paladin in comparison with e.g. warrior shouts or shaman totems -- you can help casters with mana and melee DPS with attack power, for example.

Paul said...

PallyPower was amazing for sorting this out for me. I could set up greater and normal buffs per paladin as appropriate.

Shwitz44 said...

Guys, guys, it's not about sorting. I know all about the addons.

What I'm saying is that there shouldn't be a need for them. Our blessings are class based, but members of the same class don't want the same blessing half the time. It's overly complex, and I feel like there should be a better system.

It's not about managing the system, it's about making a fundamental change to the system.

Rexkicker said...

I think the current blessing system would work really well if your normal blessings were just a single target 30 min blessing. That way your greater blessing covers the class, but your normal blessing covers the individual. Its still annoying to have to overwrite your own buffs though.

Shwitz44 said...

Perhaps, Rex, but then you'd still be casting 15 times per buff-up for blessings in a 25 man raid. 10 classes, which means 10 blessings, and then you overwrite one for the other 2 paladins, one for the feral druid, one for the tank DK, one for the DPS warrior, one for the enhancement shaman...

Get my drift?

teflaime said...

Rohan, over at Blessing of Kings, proposed one simple change that would do go a long way towards what you are wanting: combine blessing of might and blessing of wisdom into a single blessing.