Resolved an issue causing the Shadow versions of Halo and Divine Star to cost less Mana than the Holy versions.
Divine Star now generates 6 Insanity.
Halo now generates 10 Insanity.
Mindgames now generates 10 Insanity.
Giving Divine Star this much Insanity might not be healthy. Right now Divine Star and Halo are both spells we use in AoE or when we want healing (not required in single target), which is nice. Adding the Insanity components makes these rotational spells in single target just for the insanity generation alone which is a bit of a concern. In addition to that the Insanity on Divine Star is a bit too high. Perhaps should be a lower value but scale with targets hit.
Shadow does not need more things to press in single target right now and giving it more Insanity per minute than Halo doesn’t sound fun.
Mindgames getting Insanity added is nice, but still wish it felt a bit better in the rotation.
If Dstar is going to generate 6 insanity on a 15s CD but have a 27 yard range, I feel as if we might as well be evokers. Having some insanity generation is nice, it means it does actually interact with our kit in some way, but 6 on 15s means it’s rotation pretty much so you have to make sure you’re within 26 yards so it hits an enemy twice.
Burning Vehemence and Searing Light have swapped positions in the talent tree.
Searing Light is now a 1-point talent. Smite and Holy Nova to deal 25% increased damage to targets affected by Holy Fire. (unchanged)
Burning Vehemence is now a 2-point talent and has been redesigned – Increases the damage of Holy Fire by 15%/30%. Holy Fire deals 15%/30% of its initial damage to all nearby enemies within 12 yards of your target. Damage reduced beyond 5 targets.
Prayers of the Virtuous now increases the maximum stack count of Prayer of Mending by 2 per point.
I need to test the Holy Fire change on the PTR, but they finally listened to the feedback I suggested back on the beta with making Holy Fire do splash damage via a talent. I want to know if it’s 30% of Holy Fires initial damage (i.e. if I do 10k, it hits all for 3k) or 3k split amongst everything.
If it’s 3k per target than it’s a massive dps boost for Holy. You’re looking at like 3-5k extra dps.
Also, the PoM talent change makes me go wut. PoM is already a huge part of a Holy Priests healing and it just got buffed further. Personally I’d rather see something else replace it.
I don’t understand Holy Priest’s changes.
Blizzard gives us options to do damage in AoE when a month ago they said “we are looking for healers to spend more time healing than doing DPS”.
So ?
We are going to heal ? We are going to do DPS ?
Because if they want us to do DPS then they should reverse all these ridiculous damage changes that trash has right now in M+.
Hopefully blizz looks at idols. Mostly garbage for pvp. They ain’t so hot either for pve, from what I hear. Nzoth needs like a 300% buff in pvp. And reduce target cap in pvp to 3. So damage padding in bgs won’t get high and people whine.
They need to look at talents like the more insanity from crit. Awful.
2 pts to reduce cooldown for damnation and void torrent too high.
These changes IMO are in the opposite direction we want. I don’t think shadow players want to use halo rotationally and adding generation to it will add another rotational ability.
Mind Games needs more incentive to exist and I don’t think resource generation is the answer.
I don’t know how others feel but I do not want to press halo or star for damage but I do like pressing it for the heal in raid. Also Mind games is a shadow of its former self its barely a capstone
Totally agree - the single target rotation is already incredibly busy and bloated, particularly during PI and/or hero bursts, and making these spells generate insanity will add to that problem without solving our issues with damage. If Shadow is not performing to the level the developers want, the tuning should be done to the core part of the rotation, not utility/filler spells that will only add to the bloat.
I do like that Mindgames generates insanity, but it still feels totally disjointed from the rest of the rotation and a button to press only when four other buttons are on cooldown. I understand its importance for PvP, but it doesn’t mesh well with the PvE rotation.
Absolutely disagree with your outlook on halo, which SHOULD be in your mythic+ rotation, and thank god we now get insanity with it. Shadow’s most significant weakness in AoE is waiting for mind sear to proc because we cant reliably get 100 insanity unless we burn every cooldown. We need more insanity generators or a 50% reduction in cost for mind sear.
I love the idea…but getting down to this talent is not great. We give up alot of healing talents to get there and pick up ones we really dont want to get. I would like to see this moved somewhere more towards the middle of the tree and maybe one tier higher.
its kinda amazing with how much they were able to do with druids and monks and this is what shadow got adjusted. Question why doesnt VT start doing damage the instant it is applied? It feels weird and bad
PW: Solace changes are sorta weird. It seems like this is only really good because of Harsh Discipline change and giving us a holy TE spell. It’s welcome, I suppose, but I don’t know if it’s going to be any better than shield discipline in dungeons, and in raid I don’t think these changes do much at all? I could be wrong, but it wouldn’t significantly change a ramp or anything from what I can tell.
Really good changes:
Shadow covenant followup talent changes are both interesting.
Twilight Corruption still seems to be the CLEAR worse choice, especially with the buff to embrace shadow.
Dark Reprimand baseline is nice.
Protector of the frail is great now
But pain transformation is garbage. This basically would need to be a lay on hands to be taken over 2 charges and CDR for Pain supp.
Mind Blast isn’t all your mana anymore!
The weirdest change here I think is Stolen Psyche → Abyssal Reverie. Upon first look that’s somewhat of a buff for a whole rotation, but worse for Mind Blast.
But thinking about it further, this actually probably makes Purge the Wicked a mistake and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. SW:P + all its connected talents without the PTW talent heals for about the same as PTW at a 20% increase. But in Shadow covenant, it heals for almost 20% more. Basically making it a better DoT for us a huge portion of the time.
These two things echo strongly my feelings on the holy fire stuff…
And from Cathbell’s post:
Blizzard gives us options to do damage in AoE when a month ago they said “we are looking for healers to spend more time healing than doing DPS”.
DOTs are an very nice way for healers to maintain damage while focusing on healing, especially classes that have weaker healing over time aspects. While I like to smite or nova where I can in dungeons, maintaining DOTs is my preferred way to do damage in dungeons (and raid, for that matter). Swapping BV and SL feels like it might be okay in pure ST raid at least, but definitely is going to feel bad for me in M+ with how out of the way the new BV talent will be.
Honestly, my preferred solution? Swap EB and BV’s current position, and then just make BV and SL a choice node. Put Answered Prayers where SL currently is and just only have that one path to Miracle Worker/Restitution.
My guess is the Holy Fire damage is 3k to all instead of split damage. I can’t imagine why they would make it do reduced damage beyond 5 targets if it was splitting the damage anyway.
I do not like these changes to Shadow. Tacking on Insanity generation to abilities makes them more of a requirement for any build due to the low Insanity generation outside of cooldowns and getting lucky with the RNG. This is not helping the button bloat problem in some situations.
When it comes to AoE, providing an Insanity generation incentive to pick up Divine Star and Halo seems fine since we don’t have that many active AoE abilities. However, making that Insanity generation a flat amount gives players the incentive to incorporate it into their single target rotation which already has a button bloat problem. In my opinion, the Insanity generated by Divine Star and Halo should depend on the number of targets it damages. The amount of Insanity generated per target hit should be low enough to not be worth pressing in single target situations but high enough to be worth it in AoE situations. Awarding Insanity for targets healed would only make it an ability that needs to be pressed on cooldown in all situations.
When it comes to single target, providing an insanity generation incentive to Mind Games just makes the button bloat issue worse. There is even more reason to make it part of any build. At least it makes pressing the button feel a little bit better.
Halo, for the cast time and utility of damage/heal is actually good during packs. There’s always someone taking damage and the AOE for cast time is nice. Generating insanity is now a big bonus. You might get more insanity from DS over the course of the cooldown but not the same utility of a blanket of damage and healing in a large area. It’s more worthwhile of a button than Mindgames is, IMO. I’ve been trying DS for a few runs and while the CD is nicer it’s coverage isn’t. I find Halo the better all around button.