I firmly believe some tunning will happen, but it is looking pretty good with Dark Ascension. Void bolt with 9s cd is pretty much what we were asking, but the benefits should be almost tripled, taking into account the bolt travel speed. like extending 7.5s the dots and 2.5s/5s voidform with Hungering void.
No this is not what we asked for, not those who liked Voidform gameplay. The abrupt change in the rotation as well as greatly enhanced mobility was an appealing factor for some.
2 Likes
big curious question. Is Shadow’s mastery going to change now that we can avoid from having to use voidform at all?
I am very happy with these changes so far across all specs. Especially shadow. I can’t believe that now I can truly avoid void form. Yes, finally!
2 Likes
Looks like I missed quite a bit today. I’ll look at the tree more in depth and post my thoughts soon.
2 Likes
Dark Ascension seems to conflict pretty hard with Shadow’s mastery. Dark Ascension consumes all your Dark Evangelism stacks to get a 20% damage boost to non-dot spells like Mind Spike and Mind Blast.
But if you have even 10% mastery baseline, you’ll be getting a 20-30% damage boost from your mastery anyway, not just for non-dot spells like Mind blast, but also for your dots which are also doing damage.
Dark Ascension’s damage bonus seems to need to be at least tripled to feel like a cooldown.
Am I missing something?
My thoughts on the General Priest Tree Update from a Holy Priest perspective:
Top row:
- I approve of Shadowfiend being the 1st choice instead of SWD.
- I do not like that you can’t take Shackle Undead without taking Body and Soul. We need more branches into it.
- Shadowmend overhaul → Not sure what to think of it. Will need to see how much healing it does.
- I’m assuming Holy Nova has Improved Holy Nova Built into it.
- I’m not sure about Rhapsody. Holy Nova already does so little damage and it would take over 1.6 minutes to do 200% more damage. So something that hits for 18% spell power damage will do 54%? Divine Star does more than that. This ability needs to be massively buffed.
- Throes of Pain was nerfed thankfully. 1% mana seems more reasonable.
- I like Void Tendrils → Priest raid utility buff.
- Death and Madness as an option is pretty nice for solo leveling.
Middlerow:
- Tools of the Cloth is still bad for Holy, but will probably be fine for Disc I assume.
- Vampiric Embrace is pretty much doo-doo for any healer.
- Apathy would be better if it was a guaranteed slow with mind blast instead of relying on crits.
- Dominate Mind is underwhelming for M+. Needs to last a lot longer than 30s.
- Inspiration/Blessed Recovery → This gives me WOTLK vibes. Inspiration seems fine, no real complaints. Blessed Recovery will be good for PvP.
- Psychic Voice → Priests seem like they’ll be a bit nutty with 30s Psychic Scream, Void Tendrils, and everything else inbetwen.
- Void Shield → Not sure how useful this will be for Holy.
- Twist of Fate → A lot more balanced than before.
- Unwavering Will → Talent is in a much better position than it was before. -10% reduction instead of -20% is more balanced.
Bottom row:
- Angel’s Mercy will beat out Binding Heals imho. I remember using this ability during Mage Tower and it reduced your Desperate Prayer cd down by a lot.
- Holy Word Life → This ability needs to be buffed. A heal that only triggers properly off of people 35% or below isn’t going to be used that often. Increase it to 50%. (I won’t put a point in this talent)
- Lights Inspiration → There’s no reason this is a 2 point talent.
- Translucent Image → 5% damage reduction? That’s it? This is worse than what it was before. Really needs to be overhauled to a -10/20% damage reduction (2 point dump).
- Void Shift → Uhh, probably not going to take this one. Not really that exciting here.
Final thoughts:
There’s a lot more interesting options and a lot of the talents that would basically flood Holy with mana have been removed or tuned down. I end up having so many points left over at the end that I pretty much have to pick stuff up top.
My thoughts on the new Holy Priest tree:
Top row:
- I’m curious what Guardian of the Light does.
- Revitalizing Prayers beats out Sanctified Prayers just by pure math and synergy with other abilities that use Renew.
- Holy Mending seems okay under Holy Word Salvation… other than that… Benediction is probably going to beat it out of pure hps. I honestly think this one would be better branched off to the side.
- Benediction → Did this really get nerfed to 15% proc rate because of the new 2 extra jump talent? Oi.
- Archbishop as a baseline ability → Hell yeah. : )
- Burning Vehemence → A lot better position.
- Cosmic Ripple → Glad you can skip this one.
Middle row:
- Divine Hymn is in a much better spot than it was before. You don’t have to budget around taking it in a more dps focused build.
- Healing Chorus seems pretty decent, especially with Benediction.
- Everlasting Light → Only 15% additional healing to Heal? This seems pretty underwhelming. It should apply to Prayer of Healing and Flash Heal imho. I feel like this should be combined with Crisis Management.
- Orison → I like this talent. Simple, yet powerful.
- Enlightment → Why is this one all the way off to the side? This should be higher in the Priest general tree.
- Prayers of the Virtuous → Noice… synergizes with Benediction.
- Prismatic Echoes → Is this 30% off of your current mastery or a flat 30% increase? This is kind of big.
Bottom row:
- Pontifex → Crit/Mastery is already the go-to stat for Holy and I don’t see that changing now.
- Empowered Renew & Rapid Recovery → Empowered Renew was how Renew worked in BFA. It also scales off of Mastery… so pretty much it’s going to beat out Rapid Recovery.
- Say Your Prayers → Seems fine.
- Empyreal Blaze → Still think this needs to be overhauled into an AOE ability.
- Resonant Words → 2 points seems a bit too much for this talent.
- Light of the Naaru → Same as above. It’s a 2 point sink.
- Lightweaver vs Lightwell → Lightweaver is literally like Flash Concentration 2.0. You weave 2 Flash Heal, drop a Heal. It beats out Lightwell by miles.
- Desperate Times → Seems fine, but why 2 points?
- Harmonious Apparatus → 2 point dump that needs to be moved up.
- Spirited Litany → Kind of useless, but at least you can skip it.
- Divine Word vs Miracle Worker → Divine Word is going to beat this one out.
Final thoughts:
The Holy Priest tree feels like a massive improvement over the last rendition. There’s a lot more interesting choices and playstyle options and you don’t feel like you’re walking into the expansion getting nerfed.
The question that lingers on my mind is what playstyle will be Holy’s go to for raid healing. You have potential with Prayer of Healing w/ Prayerful Litany, Revitalizing Prayers, and Prayer Circle synergizing like crazy with Prismatic Echos.
A “renew” heavy build seems mostly underdeveloped though. Issue #1 is Renew doesn’t scale off of Mastery. You have to stack Versatility to buff it up.
A single target healing build is going to lean more heavily on Lightweaver, Crisis Management, Light of the Naaru, and Harmonious.
At the end of the day you can really only funnel points into one particular playstyle. It’s also fairly hard to weave in damage abilities into a single target M+ focused build.
In regards to Holy Priests damage in M+… Holy Priests are kind of lacking in this department in the tree. You have a talent that buffs Holy Fire and another that let’s you cast 3 free Holy fires in a row.
To conclude… I do need to point out the obvious elephant in the room that Holy Word Salvation is a 100% raid mandatory pick. This really needs to be addressed because it incredibly limits your bottom tree point allocations.
5 Likes
I think you see exactly as it is reads / meant to be.
Personally, I like doing extra “burst” damage during my “damage cooldown” window. However, I don’t want to have SO much of my damage to exist ONLY in that window causing the rest of the time OUTSIDE that window to have to be lowered in order to have correct balance.
I would assume that when using Dark Ascension, it only granting your “Burst” spells (Mind Blast, Mind Spike and Shadow Word: Death used rotationally) that the rest of your spells wont need to be nerfed “balanced” as much in order to offset that window.
Basically, in Cata we got Mind Spike. It was meant to be used for QUICK fights to combo with Mind Blast to kill things fast. THAT is the way that imo Dark Ascension should be viewed at now. Its not to increase ALL your damage (Dots etc.) its to just give you a moment to amp up your QUICK kill spells. But done in a cleaver way using Dots as a trigger for Psychic Link as the Conduit to bridge the damage from your Dark Ascension Window to be applied to all targets with Dots on them is where it truly shines.
That’s How I see it anyway. Once I am able to get Beta I can see it first hand. But that’s how it looks on paper to me.
Think Twins of the Sun Priestess and how it allows you to use Power Infusion on a friendly target + yourself. Same thing with Guardian Spirit.
2 Likes
Any thoughts on going the Shadowmend → Masochism route for another school heal and the 10% DR?
Seems like the beta is still very buggy and not really worth doing damage tests between different builds. It’s not registering my psychic link damage at all when I mind spike. When I mind blast for 8,500, psychic link does 1,250.
man I want beta to test priest out completely!
I hate only being able to make builds assuming that the current talents will be adjusted to a stable state ;_;.
These talent trees by far are the most exciting ones ive tinkered with… i’ve spent hours talking about it to my buds. wish i could test! D:<
So, curious. Are they still going to allow holy Priest to battle rez themselves once angel form ends in Arena lol. That would be awesome x].
Anyone in the beta that can test if Divine Word triggers a GCD?
Playing dark ascension the way you intend to is currently a sizeable damage loss.
Are we really worried about numbers at this stage?
I figure its about finding the right gameplay flow. Then numbers come in after the fact.
My take on cleaning up the NEW Shadow Talent Tree…
So after reading and watching and my own theory crafting on what would be “fun” to play Shadow as, I took the new current talent tree for Shadow and rearranged it a bit and removed/added things that I don’t think really mattered / made much of an impact.
Shadow Priest 10.0 Tree - Altered Variant
Shadow Priest 10.0 Tree - Altered Variant (Readable)
What’s Removed…
- Silence - Intended to be moved to Class tree (Take Vampiric Embrace slot)
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Painbreaker’s Psalm – Shadow Word: Death consumes 4 seconds/8 seconds of Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch, instantly dealing that damage to the target and generating up to 10/20 Insanity.
- Why?
The idea that you consume your dots but only partially doesn’t really mesh well with either the DOT aspect of Shadow or the Mind Spike aspect of Shadow. Perhaps if SW:D consumed the entirety of the DOT affect and converted it into damage would then feel good going into Mind Spike.
- Why?
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Dark Void – Unleashes an explosion of dark energy around the target, dealing Shadow damage and applying Shadow Word: Pain to your target and 7 nearby enemies. Generates 20 Insanity.
- Why?
It seemed to compete with Shadow Crash. With how Shadow Crash synergizes with Misery, it ends up feeling way better to just take Misery and Shadow Crash. This also removed button bloat.
- Why?
-
Malediction
- Why?
Combined Damnation & Void Torrent together. It made no sense to have Malediction after the fact.
- Why?
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Piercing Shadows
- Why?
Seemed to be either a placeholder or just very little impact on the rest of the shadow tree. Just a boring Maintenance buff.
- Why?
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Surrender to Madness
- Why?
Its a relic now. Replaced with Dark Ascension: Death (See below)
- Why?
What’s Changed…
- Vampiric Insight - Gave it back its +1 Mind Blast Charge. Combined it with Mind Melt as a (Choice) Swap talent since they both allow different ways to get an instant cast Mind Blast
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Mind Melt - Added +20% damage since you cant reset it from Vampiric Insight. Now it will hit harder when you get the instant cast effect from Mind Melt +2 stacks.
Dark Ascension & Void Eruption are now a (Choice) Swap talent.- Why?
It seemed to get very awkward if you took both of them in the tree. So I merged them.
- Why?
What’s New…
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Vampiric Embrace - Swapped with Silence.
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Sanguine Teachings - Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague heals you and your group or raid for 25% of the damage dealt.
- Why?
I wanted to bring a passive healing style back like what we had in the past. In this version, you will always have Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague passively heal you and your Group/raid. Numbers and effects can be adjusted accordingly.
Also, This would synergize well with Mental Fortitude. Your Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague will passively heal you if your missing health. Then once you are full health, the Mental Fortitude effect will then start building an absorb shield.
- Why?
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Living Shadow (Changed it activation trigger)
Mind Blast has a 20% chance to cause your shadow to animate after a moment. For 10 sec, whenever you cast a spell, your shadow will cast a similar spell. -
Unstable Darkness (Changed name from Ancient Madness to more align with both Dark Ascension & Void Eruption Themes)
Dark Ascension
[Voidform]
increases your critical strike chance by 15/30% for 15 sec, reducing by 2% every sec. -
Dark Ascension: Death (Replaced Surrender to Madness)
While under the effects of Dark Ascension, your Shadow Word: Deaths cooldown is reduced by 50% and does 100% additional damage to targets afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch & Devouring Plague.
OR Alternate Version
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Dark Ascension: Death (Replaced Surrender to Madness)
While under the effects of Dark Ascension, Your Shadow Word: Deaths critical strike damage bonus is increased by 30% and it cools down 100% faster.
Shadow Word: Death deals damage as though the target is below 20% health during this effect.
Notes…
-
Shadow Orbs (Potential Idea for how this can work)
Your Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay have 5% chance to generate a Shadow Orb each time they deal damage. Max 3.
Your Mind Blast and Mind Spike consume all Shadow Orbs and deal [15% of mastery] more damage per Shadow Orb consumed. -
Harnessed Shadows (Potential Idea for how this can work)
During Dark Ascension or Voidform, Your Mind Blast and Mind Spike deal damage as though they consumed 3 Shadow Orbs.- Note on Shadow Orbs…
The reason I went with this idea is so that both Mind Blast and Mind Spike can scale with mastery separately from needing to have all 3 dots on a target to get full benefit due to Mind Spike stripping dots. Doing this in Dark Ascension will reduce the Mastery dmg bonus to Mind Blast and Mind Spike. But also attacking a target without dots and outside of DA will devalue the damage potential of the baseline Mind Blast and Mind Spike if they got full mastery benefit ONLY inside DA. So with my idea, they get enhanced damaged inside OR outside DA burst window regardless of dot application. This allows the current mastery to be impactful while giving a different method to scale Mind Blast and Mind Spike with a different value of Mastery.
- Note on Shadow Orbs…
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Dark Ascension
- Remove the casting time on this. Void Eruption has a casting time because it does an AOE damage while activating the DPS cooldown. With DA, we already have to built up Dark Evangelism stacks before we can use it. Please make DA instant cast.
- Change Dark Ascension damage enhancement to be like Cata version… It needs to affect Mind Flay. You need to use Mind Flay to build up stacks of Dark Evangelism to then consume and activate Dark Ascension to then need to Build up 5 stacks of Dark Evangelism to get all buffs going for your targets with dots. Also, not getting the buff to Mind Flay gives even more reason to NOT use Mind Flay and thus conflict with Dots + filler in Flay OR Burst casting spells like Mind Spike when you don’t want to. It will feel smoother if Mind Flay is included.
Dark Archangel (Dark Evangelism) - Instantly restores 5% of your total mana and increases the damage done by your Mind Flay, Mind Spike, Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death by 4% for each stack. Lasts for 18sec. 90 sec cooldown.
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Mind Spike & Voidbolt
Thinking Going into Voidform should instead just make Mind Spike do what Voidbolt does. Since it wont have a cooldown, it will be less effective or have an entire new effect. This “Void version” of Mind Spike would NOT strip dots. -
Vampiric Embrace
VE should be ONLY in Shadows Tree- Why?
Holy and Disc have very little use for VE as its small window that they don’t have either the time or ability to cast the spells needed to take advantage of VE. So its a wasted point.
Also, VE has been and should stay the “unique” feature/reason to bring a Shadow Priest. That and damage soaking via Dispersion.
This is why I made VE and Dispersion practically impossible NOT to get in the tree without feeling like you should avoid in order to pick up more throughput options.
- Why?
Class Tree
Notes…
- Put Silence at Vampiric Embraces location.
- Add Spectral Guise around that area.
Another Version of the NEW Shadow Talent Tree…
This makes adjustment to the Voidform Playstyle
Shadow Priest 10.0 Tree - Altered Variant - 02
Shadow Priest 10.0 Tree - Altered Variant - 02 (Readable)
This version changes the way Voidform interacts with Hungering Void.
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(Removed) Void Bolt
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(New) Irrationality
Each application of Mind Spike on your target increases the critical strike chance of Mind Spike by 5%. Stacks up to 3 times.
Casting Mind Blast reduces the cast time on Mind Spike by 20% for 3 sec. -
(Changed) Hungering Void
While under the effects of Voidform, Your Mind Blast and Mind Spike can cleave up to 3 targets and applies Void Vulnerability, increasing the damage of your Mind Spells by 10% stacking up to 3 for 10 sec.
Casting Mind Spike while in Voidform no longer extinguishes your dots.
Shadow and its resource “Insanity” issue…
From what it appears, Devouring Plague and its insanity cost compared to the damage it deals is very funky. Seems like with the way the rest of the new talent tree is panning out, Devouring Plague seems like a button you don’t really want to press that often. So then the question becomes… If I am insanity capped, what do I do when I want to Mind Spike things down? That becomes an awkward dance around resource and dot management.
Possible solution…
Remove Insanity entirely…
Make all abilities cost nothing or cost mana. With the Shadow Orb talents, THOSE can be made to act like Cata orbs in that they amp up Mind Blast, Mind Spike and Devouring Plagues damage. Each spell would consume all Shadow Orbs for amplified damage.
This would then feel good as you can focus on no dot burst window and then go back to dot window and weave back and forth without feeling like you are doing something wrong with capped insanity. Oh, This can work with Mind Sear as well in that Mind Sear consumed all orbs to do giga damage… Or consumes 1 orb per tick of damage.
Outside of Consuming Shadow Orbs… all abilities cost mana (or the ones that should cost mana) and we get mana back via Masochism from Shadow Word: Death feedback, popping Dark Ascension, Dispersion, Vampiric Touch mana battery buff again.
Perhaps not enough time for DF. But something to consider moving forward.
I mean… I do agree, but my point is that Shadow’s mastery currently relying entirely on dots to function… and then this talent, doesn’t make sense and no amount of tuning changes that.
Obvious solution is to allow mastery at full benefit during DA and take that off voidform, since voidform has it to account for Shadow’s lack of dot spread, which isn’t the case anymore in DF.
1 Like
Yea that works as well.
But I thought one of the issues with Voidform was that SO much power was built into it that it made being out of it feel like crap.
So I figured it would be fine to have this give and take where our dots are at FULL power outside DA and then our NOT dot effects get amped up during it.
I really feel that would help the hill/valley feelings of power while still allowing us to BURST on demand for both Single Target and Multi target with the SW:P and VT / Physic link effect.
Honestly, only when you pile all the other interactions it has / had on top. DA has none of those.
DA is already trading dots being active for higher direct damage burst, that’s probably enough of a trade off. The damage buff of DA is 20%, you’ve gotta remember that shadow has a 30-50% damage buff from having 3 dots on its target in the first place thanks to shadow weaving.
Honestly mastery just kinda in general plays at odds to a lot of the new (old) ideas in the tree.
Fair enough.
I don’t mind either from what I can see thus far.
I suppose once I get my hands on it and tuning is more dialed in is where I can make a more concrete opinion on it.