Thoughts on Undead Priest Party

[fer]

I was thinking, with the new Undead priest skill Devouring Plague, which deals damage and recieves health Instant cast.
Will 5 UD Priest be a good party if they all have maxed shadow talent.
In shadow form they will combined recieve 100% life of damage they deal, assuming they all deal same damage.
So they will gain health 2 times because of the devouring plague skill.
Anyone ever tried the above setup before on CB.
Will there be 2 many weaknesses?
Im lvl 23 now so I don't know if this works @ high level.
Just some thoughts.

[Anonymous]

cloth ?

[Envie]

Are you talking about a 5 man PvP group? And why would you want 5 priests -- is this realistic to find 5 people all going to play the same class? Why have redundancy when you can have the versatility of dps, crowd-control, tanking etc? Who's going to tank while these priests are all doing their undead/priest specials?

I realize the new racial bonuses seem pretty cool, but they aren't designed to make one particular race or class the 'uber' template and simply add "flavor" to that class combo rather than some advantage.

It would be -fun- to take 5 players and create 5 of each race/class combo and see what happens, but it's probably not practical for endgame versatility. We're going to be happy to have 1-2 undead priests working in tandem in any one group.

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[fer]

Just thinking about could priest survive if they do this.
It was just a thought, it would seem funny to me.

[Ratama]

He's got a point with the Shadow spec there.

I hadn't looked very closely at that talent, but you wouldn't need a tank if everyone in the group is getting healed for an amount equal to their damage output, in addition to all of the Priest Defensive abilities, and god forbid they all use Shadowform and take 20% less melee damage in addition to doing 20% more damage.

Versatility is all fine and dandy until the gloves come off. There have been a lot of games where PvP could have been absolutely dominated by a group of a single Race/Class/Spec combo.

I don't know if you ever played a Light Armor Healer Channeler in SB Envie, but just after release that was the ultimate class for a good while. An army of them could have decimated any other combo.

I think it was a Group of 6 Necros that killed Lord Nagafen without help in EQ (That resulted in a whole range of nerfs to Necros; this was before Kunark).

The only problem with the 5 Shadow Priests as a PvE group would be that there are a few bosses that would overcome the healing ability of the Vampiric Embrace even with all 5 doing it. And Vampiric Embrace probably has a cooldown even though I don't see one listed on the Talent Calculator.

Just my opinion.

[Ejsu]

Channeler was a top tier class, yes, but by no means did all channelers own everyone. How about a bard for songs, snares, resist, speed boost? priest for heals and stuns? a prelate for heals and stuns and pretty good damage?



Sure, channelers could heal themselves, but it wasnt a priest or prelate. A priest stun or bard buffs could make the diffrence alone vs an all channeler group.

[Ratama]

Channeler was a top tier class, yes, but by no means did all channelers own everyone. How about a bard for songs, snares, resist, speed boost? priest for heals and stuns? a prelate for heals and stuns and pretty good damage?



Sure, channelers could heal themselves, but it wasnt a priest or prelate. A priest stun or bard buffs could make the diffrence alone vs an all channeler group.

Not before the first big round of nerfs. For example, I had 1750+ defense in defensive stance and still nuked for an average of about 450 per shot with my Ice Bolts.

I got caught outside the wall on an early raid on our walls and 20 people still couldn't kill me until I ran out of mana. I was only getting hit on one out of every 50-60 swings/spells, so I just killed one of them, hurt another really bad (but he got healed at that point) and then healed myself while they beat on me for a good half a minute.

Trust me when I say there was no reason for anything but the Healer Channeler at the time. I really wanted to play a Dual-Axe Warrior, but when I saw how well the Channeler performed, there was really no other option.

But the whole point was whether it's a good idea to give up versatility in exchange for stacking a single class with particular abilities. I definitely think it is the "most powerful" route to go at points in every game; but I also think those things will always get nerfed if someone actually does it (/cough Indalamar :twisted: ).

[Ejsu]

This is before nerfs since there were not any changes until after I left. I was a channeler, and our normal group consisted of two bards. We didnt get hit much with the resist along with resist gear. We couldnt be caught, we could kite people easily. When we had a priest stuning, there was no limit to who we couldnt kill. I believe the stun alone could turn the table on a all channeler group.

There werent many balance classes, but I think there were a bit more than people relized. We always see some of the best classes getting left out simply because people dont try things for themselves. I'd gladly drop a channeler for a bard. I would say a prelate could easily kill a channeler 1 on1 between stuns and the better heals aswell. Channelers did have some big damage though, I often hit for over 1k with bolts. The thing is, no one used resist, and resist worked very very good. Add in resist songs and you really arent getting hit too hard at all.

[Piks]

You are right, it was 6 necros but as far as I know, it was lady vox they killed.

Their tactic was kind of cheezy though. Basicly back in the day a necro could summon a pet, send it into battle and feign death once that pet died the mob would not attack the necro.

They did it by sending all 6 pets in and summoning new ones as each pet dropped out of battle than feigning again.

5 shadow priests would be a fun group but, hard to get one together considering the high demand for priests. Plus as stated before 20 percent wont make up for the cloth armor and low HP in a higher zone especially one with multipul mobs at once.

[Ratama]

What's the re-use time on the Vampiric Embrace talent?

[Tivoli]

10 seconds.

[Ratama]

10 seconds.

Okay, so with 5 Shadow Priests using that since it can evidently be up 100% of the time. And Shadowform which can also be up 100% of the time, and the Devouring Plague spell you have:

5 people who take only 80% of melee damage and heal at more than 100% of the rate of a single casters damage output.

That seems potentially exploitable.

[Hybby]

85% malee damage.

And only do an extra 15% shadow damage in shadowform.

They nerfed shadow form.