In my morning perusal of MMO-Champion, I came across a Blue Post from our friendly neighborhood crab (AKA Ghostcrawler) about the mandatory nature of Shamans. You can read the whole post if you like, since there are some compelling arguments on both sides. However, I want to draw your attention to one specific part that caught my eye:
For now, in Cataclysm, we are just sharing even more of the buffs and debuffs across a wide gamut, especially very powerful ones like Bloodlust and Battle Rez,….
Say what now?!! We can all agree that Rebirth is a very nice ability to have in progression fights. It’s the only ability to bring someone else back to life in the middle of combat. Sure, Shamans have Reincarnation, but Rebirth allows any class to return to the land of the living.
Even our beloved Goblin Jumper Cables XL lack the ability to rez in combat.
Another Battle Rez?! What an awesome addition, if you ask me. Especially if the intent is to make 10man raids more appealing. There won’t be a need to stack druids on harder fights where a lot of people are “off’ed”. Take a look at a couple other skills that are being shared:
- Warlocks are getting Dark Intent, which is sort of a mirror of the Mage’s Focus Magic.
- Mage’s gain Time Warp, an alternative to the Shaman’s iconic Heroism/Bloodlust.
Who is going to get it, though? The new class abilities show no sign of another in-combat resurrection, even amongst non-healing classes. Will it be something that can be learned like the Jumper Cables? Or will it be assigned to one specific class? With the latest tweaks to Guild Perks, we can’t expect it to be one of those. Blizzard doesn’t want those to be game-changing abilities.
So, who do you think it will be?
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If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it’d probably be a Priest.
Paladins got Divine Intervention.
Shamans got Reincarnate.
Druids got Battle Res.
Those are all effects that allow players to pseudo-ignore death.
Actually I’m just Priest biased. I can’t make a solid claim for it either way :(.
Not a bad idea. I’d be interested to see if it becomes a class other than a healer. Priest does kind of make sense, since it would lend itself to the “jack of all trades, master of none” mentality that Blizzard has been going for.
I could be Priest biased, too. =)
I thought they had taken out or repurposed Divine Intervention. I might have read that wrong, though, but if they did, Paladins could definitely be in the market for a BR.
Dunno…judging by the context, Shaman sounds reasonable. And aren’t Priests getting a mass rez spell? (OOC of course)
Since I’m seriously considering switching to Enhancement Shaman from my Priest, I’d like the idea of Reincarnate being able to target an ally, rather than just oneself.
Warlock: They’ll get the ability to apply Soulstone to someone that has died.
An unexpected development, but it turns out to be warlocks.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24702234448&sid=2000&pageNo=3#53
An upcoming variation on the soulstone.
Edit: Damn someone just beat me to it.
I think that is solid logic. Those classes all have an ability that is like a cooldown ability whereas the Priest doesn’t have one (that I can think of…but I am only on my second cup of coffee). But then again I like your Priest bias so yay for Priests.
Khaal speaks some truth. Although it hasn’t been actually confirmed yet. Nothing official has been mentioned regarding warlocks. As per Ghostcrawler on 5/20/2010:
“We are also considering (though it’s less solid) making Soulstones work more like Rebirth — you could essentially stone someone after they died and let them rez themselves — in addition to the way they work currently. That way there would be two classes with battle rez, and we could go with the model of one per fight (maybe more in 25) rather than a long duration.”
I would say the equation goes something like this:
Shaman already have Reincarnation = They are out of the running
Druids already have Rebirth = They are out of the running
If Priests end up with Mass Resurrection, then Paladins get a Battle Res
If Paladins retain Divine Intervention and/or Priests do not end up with Mass Resurrection, then Priests get a Battle Res
Though a supercharged set of jumper cables is a distinct possibility, I would imagine that Blizzard wouldn’t go exclusively that route. Even if they did, the cool down on a Battle Res item combined with the relatively low number of Engineers floating around would likely make the “wide gamut” relatively narrow in practice.
I would be in favor of giving it to Priests. As World of Warcraft’s principal healing class, they should be heavier on group utility tools than the other hybrid healers.
Edit: Good call on Warlocks as well. Perhaps that is what will happen to their Soul Stone ability when they burn a shard using the new resource mechanic.
Bringing it up in that later post certainly indicates the intention is still there to give the option to someone else.
Just since I had yet to see it offered to another class, I will assume that warlocks are still in the running.
Actually I believe the intent is to give Battle Rez to warlocks through a revamp of the soulstone. Basically allowing the warlock to cast it on a fallen raid/party member and bringing them back to life.
Here is a link to a Blizzard member discussing the possibility:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/743270-Clarification-on-Soulstone-Battle-Res.
I’m all for it! Then other classes can scream at people for not pinging the map to find their carcasses and distracting us from healing and other things – lol
I kid, I kid. It will be interesting. I’m not opposed to them doing it. I like the warlock idea. I just hope that Blizzard rationalizes it well. Giving it to rogues would be… strange. Some classes it makes more sense for – others, not so much.
I would also say that there is a slight flaw in the description that priests do not have a way to sort of ‘ignore death’.
After all, Holy Priests have Spirit of Redemption that allows them to heal for 15 seconds after death, and as far as we have seen, this particular talent is not going anywhere in the most recent Beta builds.
While my main is a priest and I would love to see them get a battle rez, I personally feel that the most logical, from both lore and current game play mechanics, would be the Paladin.
~Frangus
I’m hopeful for priests getting the battle res as it was originally our 31 point holy talent way back in WoW Alpha, Of course like the previous people I have a priest bias.
It will still be a useful ability for whatever class gets it as long as they give it to a class that can use it well.
I would actually really like it if it were a non-healer who got it, so warlocks seem like a good choice to me. For a dps to take three seconds out to battle rez doesn’t cost a lot in terms of chances of winning the fight. Depending on the situation, a healer taking the same time off might be a larger problem. I’m fairly priest biased as well, but from a raid leading perspective I call the rezzes anyway.
Didn’t Priests have a form of B-Rez or something in vanilla?
My guess is priests. They haven’t gotten NEARLY the revamp that other classes have. It feels like my baby girl is missing something.