Ok, so I'm holding off from a "Classes" discussion for a few updates - we've unleashed an avalanche of feedback on the devs lately, they've managed to keep up with it on top of all the other work, and they gave us so much to work through and test out. The CB solution was simply brilliant in taking into account every stance that was given on it - it's better as a purchase, it's initial gold cost is less offputting, it starts with full CP complement from the shop, and if you spam it too hard it's gonna cost you - in short - brilliant. Wether further tweaks are needed - who knows, but the approach is worthy of praise, and if it doesn't shut us up about it for a while, we are an ungratefull bunch of whiners... I'm looking forward to the next few updates!
BUT!
Before everyone starts giving their opinions on which of his many features the wizard could stand to give up, I'd like to say a few things about the priest:
1) I know he can be powerfull, I know the "full heal on HP potion use" is a very strong ability, and I know a few places where he is the right man for the job.
2) However, he is too situational - Good Golly isn't something you can depend on unless you locker the Zombie Dog, and then it costs you a locker slot and only works on one boss.
3) He has trouble leveraging his potions ability unless you unlock stuff, or prep stuff, or play as a halfling.
4) Since he has no inbuilt damage or damage resistance, just how much you can pull off with your strongest ability is limited since it often translates to - one mediocre hit per health potion. Ok, it sounds like I'm complaining about a theoreticaly efficent potion spike, but still...
4.1) Also, having nothing but a situational damage boost has him wasting exploration looking for undead, and with his large health pool, he's allready wasting exploration every ime he wants to get fully healed.
5) The gods he would be well served with, except Taurog, - GG and Drac, both severely discourage potion use. He also isn't all that easy to combine with Fire Heart.
6) He doesn't really feel like a priest at all, rivaling only the fighter for the most mislabeled set of abilities and gameplay expirience.
7) Due to all this - it always seems like someone could do the job better, except those few times where picking him up and romping through something feels like a formality.
Still, suggesting a rework of a seemingly straightforward base class, with challenges already in place would be a bit presumptious - if they weren't actually legit, often times brought up through the whole beta, and creating quite a bit of a gap between priests and Thieves, Fighters and Wizards.
So my suggestions:
Light:
Add a "scout: undead" clause to his "+100%" against undead ability. "Scout" abilities are tromendously powerful, and this would be a big buff as it would increase both his overall power (by saving exploration and optimizing leveling), and his viability (by increasing his dependability on undead-light maps).
Moderate:
Give the priest a bunch of indulgences. The starting out players will not know what to do with them, but once they start unlocking gods - they'll really appriciate having a class with which to experiment with gods.
Either 3 total (1 per ablility, for gag sake), 4 total (2 for the first 2 abilities, with Scout: Undead) or 6 total (2 per ability)
Say:
GOOD HEALTH: +3 HP/level, 1 Indulgences
GOOD DRINK: 100% HP potions, 1 Indulgences
GOOD GOLLY: +100% vs. Undead, Scout: Undead, 1 Indulgences
Heavy:
Since the priest lacks both damage and damage resistance, as well as having troubles with several gods, without major league unlocks and heavy preps he fails as both a fighter and as a priest.
I'd suggest adding piety related clauses to his ability, say:
1) GOOD DRINK - Small piety gain upon drinking potions - to allow him to farm small ammounts of piety with no deities, and to offset piety penalties for drinking potions so that he can worship GG and Drac (with a hope of a GG nerf incoming at some point). This would also help introduce piety into the game before the deities are unlocked, and ease newbies into gods. Whether it would break gods as such is another question, but I'd die to find out, and I'd rather have him a bit above the curve than the way he is now. It would also allow him to be the one guy who can worship a blank pactmaker for the resists or whatever, which makes sense because he's supposed to be a priest - a proffesional god worshiper.
If it worked on any potion, but especially mana potions, he could spend them early for piety benefits, while savig the health potions for the spike.
2) GOOD HEALTH - +X damage for every Y piety. Some sort of damage boost if he can accumulate, say, 10 - 50 piety or whatever numbers are made to work with his piety gain from drinking potions.
3) GOOD GOLLY - Small piety gain on killing undead with/without the undead scouting bonus. To help with Drac Worship. This would focus him on harvesting undead even more, true, and help out with GG quite a bit, but at least he gets a compensation for having to be a big health guy who you take to maps with the life-draining vampires, and blinking-lifedraining wraiths.
I think these would make him much more interesting, much more dependable and much more priestly. The new priest would look like this:
GOOD HEALTH - +3 life per level, +2 Damage per 10 piety, up to 50
GOOD DRINK - Health potion heal for 100%, +3 Piety on potion use
GOOD GOLLY - Can sense Undead, +100% Damage vs. Undead, +1 Piety for killing undead.
Or something like that. I'd take the Scout:Undead on it's own, and maybe they want to keep it simple, but after playing the game from top to bottom, I have to say he was the core class I was least happy with, or least enthusiastic to play.
The benefit of all this would include less need for all the stuff that is seemingly in the game just to help him out at times you somehow decide to play him without heavy preps. My "Heavy" suggestions might not be the smartest, or the best, but at least I opened up the discussion with something I thought about. What do you guys think?