What happened to priests?

Crucis · May 21, 2018

Guys, I think that you're all missing the OP's main point, which was due to the change from a priest having access to his entire spell selection (even if he only chose to use a few of them regularly) to having to select which spells a priest would know pretty much makes a fair number of seemingly situational spells unlikely choices to take. Then you can only take a small handful of spells, you're more likely to choose the most generally useful spells, and not bother with more rarely used, situational spells. It seems to me that priests kinda get boned by this mechanic. And players never really get a chance to try out those more situational spells because they just don't dare take them.

It seems like it'd be better if priests had all of their spells available to them, even though their number of total castings at any given spell level remained limited, as it currently is in PoE2. (This might also be true of Druids, as well, BTW.)

Even if they have all spells available, it doesn't help majority of them ARE trash. BEside Devotion, HEal and Iconic projection, you can grab whatever and feels like you're missing nothing. Even go full talent if you feel like it.

But the point is that *IF* you have them all available, you can at least experiment with them. Right now, you look at the choices and the limitation forces you to select only among the most generally useful spells and ignore the situational ones.

Zeitzbach · May 21, 2018

If they were really situationally useful, maybe. But with a few right clicking, you can tell right away majority of them overlap in duty and completely overshadow the other as a bunch of them are just "Cast Tier 1 of this inspiration" , "Cast tier 2 of this inspiration", "Cast tier 3 of this inspiration".

evilcat · May 21, 2018

It is not about spells know. Unless you specially take deity which doesnt suit your style(bad deity list). You can spend 9 points on favorite spells and rest 19 on experiments. It doesnt matter.

Even if at tier 4 all shining Bacon, Triumph of Crusaders, Devotion of Faithfuull, Circle of Protection are somehow useful, but you can cast only 2 of them.

Casting Pillar of Faith or Pillar of Holy fire twice is legit spending.

Even if you spend 18 points on spells to be generous and versalite, you still have 10 more level points and nowhere to spend them on, since there are no passives, and most are at high levels. At low level you have arms bearer.

At tier V it may be hard to find 1 spell which doesnt suck.

Champions Boon 8sec for 30sec single target 2 ispirations. If someone needs engadment probably already has it.

Buffs combine long cast with short duration, if long duration then single target and just single inspiration.

Edited May 21, 2018 by evilcat

lpro · May 21, 2018

To restate, the priest needs much faster cast times for inspirations/condemnations and all around better inspirations since all but a few are terrible and quickly outmoded. Even giving all the options per encounter would only currently give you...mostly bad options per encounter, as evilcat said, except a few level spells that are mutually exclusive but actually decent. Healing can stay more or less the same although is in need of a bit of a relook considering how slow watchful presence is, for example, and damage spells are fine since nobody expects the priest to shine there. But if the priest is going to be a viable support/buff class, its needs to have actually good inspirations and ones that don't take forever for pathetic benefits. Devotions for the faithful is currently the //only// good one, practically.

As other posters have noted, the basic issue is that priest was not revised to go along w/ the new inspiration system; other classes quite apparently /were/ revised. It's just an oversight that Obsidian should rework.

Edit: I looked over the POEI priest again and it actually had a lot more heals, while the inspirations were almost always...better?

Edited May 22, 2018 by lpro

Parasol_Syndicate · May 21, 2018

I do miss the comfy process of applying blessings from POE1.

You'd lay down some consecrated ground at the front line,

Hit your enemy mob with interdiction, then save your group heal for things turning against you.

If you had Durance, you could have him drop some gunfire while you figured out what needed buffing, or managed someone else.

Some fights(lighthouse, etc) required some major revisions, but overall it felt more intuitive the priest mechanics in deadfire.

I do like the reduced spell selection, though. No sense having bloat for stuff you'll never cast.