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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe final word on priest racial abilities
by Elizabeth Harper 
Oct 19th 2006 at 1:30PM
At last we have full disclosure on the racial abilities for Blood Elf and Draenei priests come the expansion -- or at least unconfirmed rumor from beta testers on the World of Raids forums. I am somewhat disappointed, though, having hoped the addition of new priest-available races would give Blizzard an opportunity to equalize the racial abilities across the factions -- as currently the Dwarf's Fear Ward ability makes some difficult raid encounters much simpler. So when it was announced that priests would have one old and one new racial ability, I had hoped to see a horde priest with Fear Ward. But instead, Blood Elves will receive Touch of Weakness (not a bad self-buff for soloing or PvPing) and the Draenei will receive Fear Ward (no explanation required). Well, perhaps we'll see fewer raid encounters in the future in which fear plays a large part.
Update: Eyonix responds to the issue of racial abilities by saying (among other things), "there will be new ways (for both factions) to remove and/or prevent fear in the Burning Crusade. So, in short -- lay down that crutch, you don't need it anymore."
Filed under: Priest, Expansions, Draenei, Blood Elves
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
HordeSkills Oct 19th 2006 6:26PM
wait huh? not all horde tanks are undead. And no you cant WOTF during nef cause what happens if you do... nef eats your face. We dont let melee undead WOTF during nef because he may turn toward melee and breath them, and casters and healers are on that side too. Alliance dont need OTs, just their own stance dancing and one fear ward priest to suffice.
Plus most horde prefer tauren tanks because of the 10% more health.
Deris Oct 19th 2006 6:42PM
Big thing you are all forgetting :::
WOTF is reactionary (you *could* use it pre-emptively, but as someone said - Nefarion's timer tends to be a bit off, same with most fearing mobs).
Fear Ward is Pre-emptive, a "set it and forget it" for 10 minutes. *huge* difference.
lolcakes Oct 19th 2006 7:55PM
Please, something like Nef is all about control.
Having a dwarf priest or two chaining fear ward on the MT means NEF WILL NEVER MOVE EVER. No random tail lashes, no random shadowflames nuking all the healers. No cleavalols mashing all the rogues at once.
It makes a reasonably fun fight totally trivial.
Elite Oct 20th 2006 2:35AM
Umm I've done a decent amount of raiding with a horde guild and I have to say that on our server if you think 25% of your raid is gonna be undead you are sadly mistaken. Most of the time it was less than 15% if not less than 10%. Oh and I think the whole time I was with the guild we had a whole 1 undead warrior. L2payattention to reality. Fearward is amazing but if its not gonna be a big deal in BC why does it matter. If anything thats a nerf on blizzards part giving alliance a skill that they know won't be useful.
pcx Nov 15th 2006 4:08PM
Very simple answer as to why horde wouldn't get fear ward, why *I* wouldn't give them fear ward at least not as a restricted racial ability anyway. If blood elves get fear ward it would instantly "obsolete" every horde priest the way dwarves trump every alliance priest.
One of my early characters was a priest, a night elf priest, before I really comprehended the fact that priests had unique racials. When I got to 60 I learned night elves had a major hurdle in getting into end-game guilds, one they had to compete with dwarf priests and two they had to over-come the stigma that you "made a mistake by not rolling a dwarf priest", if you know what I mean. Now all that is bad enough when everyone starts out knowing about priest racials (and pretty much everyone knows by now), but how terrible is it to say, be an undead priest for two years now suddenly the flavor of the next two years is going to be blood elves because they get fear ward? Pretty horrible really.
So I think we can infer from the blue post that this issue is finally being addressed outside a restricted racial. This means either a dropped spell (my guess would be paladin, but a warrior shout would be a good option) in a BC dungeon, or a new alchemy potion. And of the two, alchemy makes the most sense since it allows a fear ward but it's not "free" so the priest ability isn't instantly obsoleted (and really who wants to hear a few hundred thousand dwarf priests whining about how their racial is useless now and they wish they had rolled a nelf mangina?).
In any case, this is actually pretty decent news. Maybe a few months down the line I'll dust off my nelf priest and see if the first reaction from the uber guilds isn't "so why didn't you roll a dwarf?".
Grandleon Oct 20th 2006 6:12AM
So the whole argument is that fear ward is powerful in a handful of pre-BC raid encounters, and so it must be overpowered on a BC race that won't be available until after those encounters have been rendered obsolete...
jpc Oct 20th 2006 11:53AM
http://nihilum-gaming.co.uk/images/loot.jpg
I count atleast 17UD. That's more than 25%, alot more.
Casserna Oct 21st 2006 5:14AM
It's pretty obvious jpc is a casual who has never raided before.
Here's what happens in a boss fight with fear:
You do not want your tanks feared! When your tank gets feared, even for a second, aggro shifts to someone else and the boss changes positions. Having bosses with frontal cone attacks change positions is not a good thing. Fear Ward means aggro will never change and boss will never move, which makes that fight a world easier.
You DO want your healers and DPS feared! When they're feared, they can't pull aggro on the boss. If the tank gets feared and the Warlock standing 25 yards away doesn't get feared, he will pull aggro and move the boss 25 yards out of position. That's why you do NOT want anyone using WoTF during a boss fight. Often times you will tell your high DPS people to run INTO range of fear.
The lrn2p posts are hillarious. Half of them are "Fear Ward is not useful, just stance dance". The other half are "Alliance deserve overpowered Fear Ward because Horde get to use WoTF and WoTF is uber in raids!!!" Make up your minds.
Stryider Oct 20th 2006 5:07PM
Deris, I don't know if you understand what fear ward is or not. It's not something that you set and forget. It's on a 30 second timer and once you are feared it is used. It's not as though you put in on and for 10 minutes you are fear free...