Monday, May 12, 2008

Divine Intervention Idea

Divine Intervention is a very weird spell. The spell itself is a terrible, terrible mechanic. You can only cast it on another person, who must be a resser AND in a position where she won't draw aggro when the fight ends. Compare that to the Warlock soulstone, or Shaman self-res. And yet the flavour of Divine Intervention--the paladin sacrificing herself to save her companion--is so strong, that the spell somehow works.

In reality, the major use for Divine Intervention is to help the paladin avoid a repair bill. It would be nice to have DI do something useful, while still retaining its flavour.

Tharok and I were talking about it, and came up with the following:

Divine Intervention
Instant Cast, Reagent: Symbol of Divinity, 100 yards range, 60 min cooldown
The paladin sacrifices herself to return all other dead group members to life with X health and Y mana. This spell can be cast in combat.

So it's a combat res, but the paladin has to die. It's possible to get up to a 4 for 1 trade, but you can only resurrect people in your group. You'd probably need to combine this with preventing groups from being changed in combat, and maybe give druids a real resurrection spell as well.

Edit: Actually, Divine Intervention is a really interesting spell from a design point of view. The key element of the spell is that the paladin has to die, to sacrifice herself. However, the paladin is often the healer or the tank, and usually when the tank or healer dies, the group wipes soon after. So you need an effect which makes a large impact, and can lead to the group defeating the fight, but which overcomes the extremely large drawback of losing the tank/healer.

20 comments:

  1. A spell like that would be incredibly over powered.

    Just imagine what Arena would be like, heh.

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  2. You wouldn't be able to use it in Arena though. The cooldown is too long, so it wouldn't be available.

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  3. 60 minute cooldown = Not arena-eligible. Spells have to have a <10 minute cooldown to be used there, I believe.

    I've always thought that DI was clunky. I was thinking that instead of wipe protection, it should provide some sort of immense defensive capability to its target, like a target-able Shield Wall on a long cooldown. This would be a pro-active sort of wipe prevention, give the healers some breathing room, and give Prot Paladins a panic cooldown.

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  4. DI can be cast on anyone, not just a rezzer. In a mag wipe one night, a pally cast it on me (undead warrior tank) right before the wipe. After the wipe, Mag reset to being channeled again, DI expired on me, and I was saved a repair bill.

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  5. Well, keep the long cooldown (like DI currently) would stop it from being used in arenas at all, right? Note: I've never arena-ed so I have no idea. That said, won't Death Knights be able to rez teammates as ghouls? Also, I'm tired of arenas being the yardstick for PvE character ability improvements.

    Anyway, from a PvE standpoint I don't think this would be too crazy. DI doesn't see a lot of play when I'm running around in a group. I agree with all the points in the post. It fits with the self-sacrifice theme and it is head and shoulders more useful than DI-ing the rogue with jumper cables in order to hear "No, its a wipe"

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  6. Heh, andy, I was sort of assuming that the paladin would cast DI for a more useful purpose than saving a few gold.

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  7. That's an interesting idea, but the main purpose of DI is quick wipe recovery.

    Soulstones and self rez have the same D.I.A.G.P (Die In A Good Place) mechanic.

    That said, I think you'll see some sort of mass rez for Paladins in WotLK.

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  8. I dunno Honors, there was massive speculation about a mass-res spell for BC, and that never happened. Where are you drawing this thought from?

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  9. re: Honors Code

    In a raid environment, soulstones and self-res shouldn't be used as a DIAGP tool. They should be used to ensure key people survive long enough to do their jobs. If those people live long enough that the fight is known to be lost before they die, then the DIAGP thing should get used, but really, SSing a resurector in a fight where say mages are key but very fragile, is just silly.

    As an example of using the shaman self-res in an interesting way: back when we were first killing prince (2nd or 3rd kill), I can remember seeing an OOM shaman run into combat and get herself killed on purpose by the shadow nova so that she could self-res and get mana back.

    DI has some usefulness on fights like Leotheras, where it can be used to take someone out combat, but really, the spell is dumb and mostly worthless at the moment.

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  10. I wouldnt say its worthless, its a definately helpful wipe recovery tool. Back pre-BC, it was the counter to horde being able to have wipe recovery with ankhs. This is a different way to handle it, but still gives the same effect. Being able to bring back a bunch of people would be really OP....but still awesome. I do wish there was some kind of OOC mass rez available.

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  11. DI was a much better mechanic when you could bubble out of the death or when the person removed from combat was able to do out of combat rezzing.

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  12. Divine Intervention is unique amongst all wipe recovery tools in that it requires the active awareness of two players to work effectively. It also requires 2 rez'ers in your group including the Paladin, which is a relative rarity in the non-raid game. I can see nothing wrong with DI becoming a self-sacrificing battle-rez @lvl80, especially if the Deathknight abilities released thus far get into the game unchanged.

    That said, I'd be pretty happy with any change that makes DI more intuitive, viable and useful, in whatever circumstances you care to mention. I'm supremely frustrated that Warriors and Paladins are locked out of many of their abilities in the Arena whilst other classes can take full advantage of theirs.

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  13. That'd be one way to make sure that ret paladins were in every raid. Hell, I'd take 'em in every group.

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  14. @Kalon: yeah, that was my thought too. Sure, it's all well and good to say:

    "So you need an effect which makes a large impact, and can lead to the group defeating the fight, but which overcomes the extremely large drawback of losing the tank/healer."

    But you have to also balance it around the fact that expendable ret paladins will have it too ;)

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  15. Honestly, the mass res is more consistent with traditional Warcraft paladins than the current DI. However, how about we do it more like Warcraft III, the paladin sacrifices himself/herself to bring back any dead group members, but only for a limited time before they die again? That way, it has the benefit of being used either as DIAGP for anhks, new SS's, whatever, or can turn the tide of battle (particularly if 1 of the ressed is a druid).

    Hell, I'd be happy if they replaced druids' battle res with a real res and replaced paladins (the "alleged" combat healers) the druid's battle res.

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  16. Right, revaan, because it's not like paladins don't provide enough group utility. Let's give 'em a brez too. Since paladins are the masters of buffs, maybe they should get mark of the wild too?

    If you want to make paladins the theoretical combat healers, make their seal/judgment system work more with actually healing. Force them to use seals and judgments to heal. Then it makes sense to give them a brez; they're actually in combat. As it stands, paladins are the least mobile and least likely of the healing classes to even be near combat.

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  17. What about makeup for the 1o-man raids in WoTLK?.. I probably will never do 25-mans, but, being able to have 10-man versions of all the raids makes raiding feasible for me.

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  18. Mass Res would have no real use in a Raid besides saving a little time.

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  19. This DI idea however would be great ^^.

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  20. I'd had similar thoughts about DI. One of them was to either sacrifice or severely gimp the Paladin, in exchange for either the battle-type rez, or to put some kind of Avenging Wrath-type of buff on all living party members. This would be much more of a 'raid saver' than DI currently is. The cost to the paladin would have to be high, though, like having 10 minutes of resurrection sickness or something.

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