I don’t think we have a ton to be concerned about after messing with it.
The 50% buff to atonement outside raid means you can actually lean more on your atonement healing than you could before. Because of that, you’re generally resetting Bender much faster taking Void Summoner.
TE is pretty useless now, but on the other hand we can take Aegis of Wrath with void summoner AND the ultimate penitence line. We sacrifice Harsh Discipline that way, but Harsh Discipline rework makes it so much less consistent that it honestly doesn’t feel like much of a loss.
I’m seeing pretty significantly increased healing numbers through atonement right now, and our damage is actually pretty good IMO.
The only issue I think is our 4piece, which is… kinda extreme trash. Smiting is generally the last thing we want to be doing in a Scov window, so it’s very weird that the 4set is like 'hey we’ll buff smite there! ’
It also feels very questionable…all these reworks when the expansion is heading to either -its end or - its half way trough. Either way its unbeliveably disrespectful to customers…that they released classes in such state that half of them need rework which take place like 3/4 year after the launch.
I would take some changes rather than no changes.
There is actually no right time for these changes. Someone will always be unhappy.
This is but the FIRST iteration. Changes will come to this.
yep i’m betting they forget to buff the cd reduction granted to Salvation by holy words after this tier is over too : P.
also on another note related to Divine Star and Halo being nerfed. still no sign of Cascade anywhere… it has been a real shame, and personal pain point for me, to see how these cool spells from Pandaria have been repeatedly nerfed over time to the point of being nearly irrelevant. Halo at least has gotten several quality of life adjustments to its programming over the years so it wont aggro creatures not already in combat, and i think it doesn’t break CC now too.
but of the 3, Cascade was always the most fun to watch go out. i can’t help but suspect that the level of visual joy associated with the spell was one key reason for it being removed though. after all, they nerfed the original graphic on Divine Aegis, one of the most visually appealing graphics ever put into the game.
somebody on the dev team really seems to have an axe to grind with cool looking spells, and has insisted on steering the game in an incredibly visually boring direction for all these years. i know somebody’s bound to jump in here and say “oh no, its cause of how delayed teh healing is from when you press the button,” but the increasingly narrow gap from when one instance of damage goes out, to when the next damage event occurs, and the forced rabid frenzy of healing speed necessitated by that design as a consequence, has become one of the biggest design problems of the combat system as a whole.
they have always needed to slow the whole thing down for several years now. a game where cascade can exist is a better game
How is the additional Atonement healing going to put in work, though, without the Aberrus 4-set? Considering ~70% of my Radiances were procs, (+15% healing, +3 second Atonement, -50% mana, insta-cast), that’s a lot of throughput, convenience, and risk mitigation wrapped into one that we’re losing, and the compensation is just Smite spam. Ult Pen sounds cool, but essentially just another long CD. A double Radiance proc was essentially a major CD of its own, and contributed throughout the fight. Kinda feeling like another Borrowed Power loss issue rearing its ugly head mid-expansion.
Very much looking fwd to the Disc changes, did not really feel that it was a complicated rotation but I’m not mad about having to press less buttons, also ultimate penitence is going to feel amazing!
I mean it’ll work a lot like Season 1 did, but considerably buffed from that time. Disc wasn’t really struggling at the end of S1 after our sins of the many and radiance throughput buffs.
That said, we can address it: if you want that feeling back, take Enduring Luminescence instead of Bright Pupil. The 10% increased duration comes out to 3 seconds - so it’s pretty close to what our tier set was.
Also Ultimate penitence basically functions as Harsh Discipline Penance x3 with a radiance cast (so you don’t waste a charge) when fully talented, and with using penance on CD, we can push it to about a 2.5m cd. So we gain a ton of on demand burst heal for when we need it. Rotating between that and Rapture for big group damage events is probably going to be the play.
If Mass Dispel has a 2 min CD, its effect should be buffed to dispel all enemy magic buffs in addition to all magic debuffs on allies in its radius. This is not too big of an ask at all. Two minutes is a substantial cooldown and its power should be proportioned accordingly.
Mass Dispel is probably my favorite priest spell. I love that priests have long been the dispel kings. It is unfortunate that Blizzard seems to be nerfing a beloved core class spell, and a core part of the class fantasy, because of sub-optimal dungeon design.
messing around with tier set as shadow. Im not gonna lie it does not feel great. But the best feeling build ive found for aoe is dropping yogg+nzoth for deathspeaker → mastermind → yshaarj
I see pros and cons for Ult Pen.
Take, for example, if it was active in this season:
In Nelth, we could bypass one extra heal check on the last three bosses. They all have 2-4 major damage phases that Ult looks like it could handle on its own, and little movement requirements.
Then you take Uldaman, Stonewatcher’s stomps or Deios’ wings, that blast the group much more frequently. Ult won’t help there.
Vortex Pinnacle, Ult can be a big boon on 1st boss, and salve through 1 or 2 Novas on Asaad. But I don’t think it could help you through Altairus’ Downburst.
I’m very concerned about fights with the tough group-wide burst + enforced mobility combo, where insta-Radiance was all but necessary. Luminescence isn’t an answer unless and until it replicates the 4set- any cast time still requires being stationary, which isn’t always possible (Iridius pools, Altairus again). As far as I know, Lumi only extends Atonement by 1.5 seconds. Lastly, remember we had 4-set AND Bright Pupil this season.
I was so happy to read Blizzard’s dev statement, they understand the problem- they just haven’t put forth a good solution.
Some of your cons we don’t have another tool to replace it with that ult. pen is taking the place of right now.
It won’t cover every stonewatcher stomp, no. But Light’s Wrath would have covered just as many. We’ve also got significantly higher throughput for something like stomp outside of ult. pen right now.
In something like the constant rot fights like Altairus or Khajin in HoI, Ult pen is a healthbar reset. That’s pretty valuable as well. This is unironically a better healing CD than anyone else has access to, so we shouldn’t sell it short.
Insta-Radiance was that bridge over the frequent burst damage. Ult is more of a long CD to help fill that gap for the infrequent extreme burst phases after we’ve exhausted Barrier and Rapture.
Thinking to next season:
I don’t know some of the older M+ very well, DF has been the first time I enjoyed Disc enough to take it into M+. DotI has a lot less mobility checks. Ult will see great use there, I’m sure. Manor, Ataldazar, etc, I’ll find out. Darkheart and Everbloom are going to suck no matter what (already hate both on TW).
I don’t dislike Ultimate Penitence. It’s great for replacing Light’s Wrath, which I never liked. I’m more concerned with other things- the loss of the 4-set, Mind Blast, and Harsh Penitence changes most of all.
Instant radiance is a convenience thing, for sure. But spending like sub 1 seconds to cast radiance now, and gaining an effective 8% throughput bonus on Atonement on top of Penance and IE damage buffs and the best healing CD in the game by far more than makes up for it.
Lots of great changes here and the new move is awesome. I have two pieces of feedback though.
The tier forcing us into the right side of the tree doesn’t feel good. Sure I could stick to the left side, but then I get slightly boosted smites every 3min with shadow fiend. So we have to shadow covenant, it’s upgrade, and mindbender at least. Then it’s like well, might as well get the rest of the mindbender traits and the left side class tree mindbender heal. So it ends up being like 8 talent points just to get meaningful use of the tier.
Harsh Discipline: The nerf to this makes it so much less fun. In a good group I rarely had to press radiance, I could throw up a few renews, mind blast, smite and then super penance for big atonement. Now we sort of have to waste charges of radiance just to get the fast and fun penance and even then it’s not a 100% chance.
Season 2 Harsh Discipline goes so well with the tier, with the new atonement changes, with the new talents… It would be so smooth! I read your post on why you changed Harsh Discipline so here is my counter.
Harsh Discipline: Smite causes your next penance to fire an additional bolt. Stacks 3 times. This way you don’t have to worry so much about holding it, it’s guaranteed and ready when you need it. OR Make the node a choice node.
Of course just my personal opinion, but super penance was one of the most fun button presses and its so rare now.
New holy priest tier set is a bit awkward. Renew doesn’t scale with mastery and only minimally with Empowered Renew. Which sucks cause I like casting renew. Rapid Recovery makes renew from Salvation do about 12.5% more healing (but less duration) and procs on things like Revitalizing Prayer (and presumably the tier set) seem to heal for about 20% more total for whatever reason. But Empowered Renew on the other hand makes hard casts renews about 40% stronger than with Rapid Recovery once you factor in the initial heal + mastery.
It’s definitely a trade off but I prefer Empowered Renew. The new set bonus proc’d renews will favor Rapid Recovery, which is annoying.
I really don’t like having raid CD balanced around tier set. Getting Salvation off CD once this tier is gone is going to be such a pain that there will be few times you’ll get more than 1 Salvation off during a raid boss. If the proc rate is good enough to make hard casting renews worthwhile then that’s in Empowered Renews favor but I know people hate taking that mastery penalty casting renews.
I really don’t like having raid CD balanced around tier set. Getting Salvation off CD once this tier is gone is going to be such a pain that there will be few times you’ll get more than 1 Salvation off during a raid boss. If the proc rate is good enough to make hard casting renews worthwhile then that’s in Empowered Renews favor but I know people hate taking that mastery penalty casting renews.
I agree 100%. Nerfing or buffing anything around a temporary tier set is poor design. What happens when the tier is over, will they modify the spells again or will we be hamstrung with spells balanced around something that no longer exists?
Also, at this point there is no reason renew shouldn’t benefit from mastery. If it is the hot effect that could severely impact it just apply echo of light when renew is initially cast but scale it for the total healing (so a little different from empowered renew).
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