I guess I just don’t agree.
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.
Disc
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).
In all honesty with the proposed mana changes, it’s high time for Holy Word: Salvation to instead have a flat cooldown. Being forced to used Holy Words even during non-damage events to force a reset on that cooldown is burning mana that can otherwise be used more intelligently.
Concerning the Tier bonus for Holy in patch 10.2
Testing it on the PTR as of today on myself alone in Valdrakken. I’m not gonna comment on the usefulness of it too much, mostly the “mechanical” or “inner working” aspect of it. (Be aware that changes can happen with future build and this post could become outdated.)
The 2 set bonus is interesting. It is not interacting with Empowered Renew (based on the combat log, no healing from it showed up while testing with it), but it does get benefits from Rapid Recovery. If you have Rapid Recovery, it will do exactly as the Tier bonus says, you get a 14 seconds Renew on the target of Serenity or 5 sec for Sanctify, yet it will get the bonus healing from Rapid Recovery as each tick will be the talented version without losing 3 sec on the duration of the Tier bonus renew. Stronger renew, no downside for the Renew from Serenity and Sanctify.
Also for the 2 Set Bonus: It increases the duration of Renew making it a super long buff if you focus a specific target to bump it. So the Tier bonus duration is cumulative. That means it add to the duration of Renew extra seconds on top of the regular duration for every cast of Serenity and Sanctify. Starting with casting regular Renew on yourself, you can then cast Serenity and it adds 14 seconds to the duration (If talented with Rapid Recovery: 12 + 14 = 26, 26 + 14 = 40). I was able to roll it into a 53 seconds Renew on a single target by using multiple cast of Serenity/Sanctify and cooldowns. It can sometimes not register the increase, so some Serenity didn’t add the extra 14 seconds, and there is a “soft cap” at 40 seconds so you can’t go over 54 seconds where you plateau and I wasn’t able to get it higher. Casting only regular renew won’t do that and is a waste of mana while your renew is above 15 seconds since regular renew won’t increase the duration over 15 seconds.
Unrelated to the Tier Bonus, but a slight bug on live and ptr, if you cast a regular Renew with Rapid Recovery while having a Renew on your target, it will bump it to 15 seconds even if Rapid Recovery usually have regular renew at 12 sec. Only the first cast will be at 12 sec, the updated version will be at 15 sec. That’s the same with Sanctify 5 sec Renew + Rapid Recovery + Recasting regular renew. Not a major bug. I don’t think people care about it, it’s basicly a feature now ?
The 4 set bonus seems to be a very low proc rate, and is named Sacred Reverence as a buff . And I discovered while testing that I really didn’t get the phrasing of it until using it and thinking it was bugged, then reading the tooltip again…
Spamming flash heal and Serenity on myself for 3-4 full mana pool to test the rolling renew of 50 seconds from 2-set bonus, and seeing it pop once is terrible (It seems to be pop from Renew’s tick of healing). Maybe it’s balanced for group play and the talent Benediction, but it felt like forever on a single target to get it popping. I don’t know if it’s a bad interaction with the rolling renew that I was testing since it should proc from Renew’s healing or that it’s really for raids and large battlegrounds. (Would love to test it with Holy Word: Salvation in Isle of Conquest at Hangar 40vs40, even with the 2 charges max just to see how it much I can make it pop!)
The phrasing of the buff made me believe I would get a free cast of Serenity once in a while, like a refreshed Serenity available, but not really: It’s making it not use a charge of Serenity or Sanctify on a currently available charge. You don’t get an extra charge, you get a free use on an available charge. (Just like a free trial, where you have to buy a month, so it’s not really free…)
If you get the proc with 0 charges of Serenity or Sanctify available, you have your spells light up, but you don’t get a charge, you have to wait for a charge to be available and THEN you get a free double Serenity or Sanctify because it’s not consuming the charge that popped from your regular casting and refresh. It just allows you to use a charge twice in a row unlike for example the talent Epiphany that refresh the cooldown of Prayer of Mending, so it’s a bit confusing it light up at 0 charge and you want to use it, but you can’t. It works fine if you have currently available charge and must feel good having 2 charges of Serenity and 2 charges of Sacred Reverence available (That won’t happen often in PvP…)
I wasn’t able to see it in the combat log (either “My Actions” or “What happened to me?”). It’s still early in the PTR, but that’s weird interactions. They probably didn’t want the pop from the 4 Set Bonus to be wasted if it’s a refresh and you are at 2 charges max already, but the interaction at 0 charge is confusing especially since Serenity is basicly “on cooldown” most of the time in my line of activities.
That’s just how pandemic works. When you refresh a HoT/DoT above 30% of their duration, you get that 30% time added on. It’s so that you don’t lose time while refreshing Dots/Hots at low duration.
I miss the days when developers would explain their line of thinking and how they came to a particular conclusion.
Looking at the shadow changes…I just don’t understand. Does anyone on the team ever play shadow or is it all just sims and theorycraft? Because the ups, the downs, the all arounds is simply nauseating.
A 24s cd on mindblast? Mass dispel every two minutes? Nerf after nerf to damage with nothing to compensate for all the gutting. No give, all take.
Will someone from the team at least explain to us what they would like shadow to be? What’s the end game here? Because as of right now it doesn’t seem as if those designing the class actually play it.
i keep trying to look for reasons to continue to main a priest going into 10.2, but after seeing whats about to happen especially to shadows talent “rework” because the spec has too much going on??? whos saying these things? i could probably play shadow on my xbox controller in its current state and for some reason it needs to be simplified more? Shadow will not be viable whatsoever with these current changes in any content. It will 100% be a dead and laughable spec.
RIP SHADOW
The rotation has a lot going on and much of that is due to the frequency that Mind Flay: Insanity and Mind Spike: Insanity are available, so we’re adjusting the frequency of the effect.
maybe they do play shadow and they are the ones saying that shadow has too many things going on in their rotation, because i can’t find any other spriest that would ever say something like these dev notes about shadow.
absolutely embarrassing.
It’s really going to hurt when bursting is the affix. Blizzard doesn’t realize that they are effecting more than one factor of a spell.
You mean like another other comps that’s not the god comp for the current meta? Oh the horror! I guess warrior hunter rouge shammy warlock monk DH DK are 100% dead spec and laughable spec currently right?
do you even know what you’re talking about? im not talking about spriest being part of the god comp (for the first time in years btw) I’m talking about their rotation being destroyed because of this change. Surge of Insanity now triggers from every 3 casts of Devouring Plague instead of every cast of Devouring Plague.
idc if they make shadow do less dmg anymore. we’ve already seen x3 nerfs back-to-back-to-back with those, but now they are making shadows rotation boring with this change. imagine a warrior that doesn’t get to press mortal strike until every 3rd overpower or a rogue that doesn’t get to press their finisher abilities until every 3rd shadow dance. i’m assuming you main a mage? If so, you have no room to talk whatsoever. There hasn’t been a single season since the launch of WoW where a mage hasn’t been viable.
go place your time elsewhere because this isn’t the place for you.
even though you don’t know what you’re talking about let me shed some light to your comment. These classes warrior hunter rouge shammy warlock monk DH DK have a far better rotation feel than spriest does in the PTR. So much so that if the changes go live i will be re-rolling to one of these other classes. Why you ask? Thats because even though i love shadow for their class fantasy, rotation, and animations i absolutely refuse to play them if their rotation is so dry and boring that all im doing is spamming mind spike 70% of the time.
if you haven’t tested it please be sure to try it out. i promise you will not enjoy it.
Sure sure… wouldn’t be complaining one bit if spriest is still going to be meta even if the playstyle is bad.
i 100% would still be complaining. there’s a reason i don’t play dev evoker when they came out even though they were absolutely blasting away the dps meters. Thier rotation is boring. i was playing shadow long before they were meta because they were fun to play. even after the rework. Stop assuming and just give up. Like i said you have no business here.
also take note im not complaining about the MD/PI nerf… it was needed and doesn’t really affect our playstyle aside from the 5 second uptime loss of PI during our burst. I’d rather lose all of my support buttons and keep my CD’s to myself if it meant i could have a smooth and fun rotation as shadow.
Why are you such a hater?
Really don’t get all the utility nerfs. Holy priests are slow, fragile, don’t get interrupts or battle rezzes or a heroism-like ability. We needed the utility to be worth playing/bringing to a group. The disadvantages are really heavy and will now be even worse. Why would you even bring them with these changes?
Holy is mainly brought for its utility as part of a healer comp. You got PI + Mass Dispel, Divine Hymn, Salv, and Symbol. Our HPS is near the bottom now I noticed now on reclears and warcraftlogs shows that Holy is 2nd to last. I was telling my other guildies that Holy needed a +10% hps buff then 10.2 launches and were getting slammed with nerfs.
Either way… Salvs reset is nerfed, but our tier set should proc enough extra Holy Words that it makes up for the difference. It’s something that has to be tested out live though…
Symbols nerf hurts the most because that extra mana + defensive cdr helped a lot in raid. It also hurts in M+ because I could reset tanks one minute defensives as well. So a bear tank or prot paly use their 1 minute defensive, and I can immediately reset it so they chain it back-to-back.
Disc was compensated with the nerfs with Ultimate Pentience, which gives it a 2nd raid healing cooldown that it needed. Disc was overall played less this raid tier because Holy is easier to play and had more utility.
Holy just needs something to compensate for the nerfs. Same deal with Shadow.
Silence or Shining Force would be nice, but I would much rather have an extra spot healing ability.
First off, as disc priest that mainly enjoys the mythic plus aspect, I want to thank Blizzard for actually starting to address a consistent problem of the balancing act between raid/mythic plus scaling by slighty increasing atonement in mythic plus. That being said…I think it should be the beginning of more similar changes that make the spec more viable in the mythic plus environment.
What I do not understand is the absolute gutting of the priest specs because of the synergy shadow priest has in Season 2 with the meta comp classes/specs that mind you, were created by you. You already took away shining force, we have no interrupt, no brez, no lust and have to spend 2 talent points for being able to dispel diseases, still can’t dispell poisons, which is ridiculous. PW:Barrier being nerfed, Mindblast c/d increased, Symbol of Hope nerfed, PI being nerfed and MD on a 2 minute is excessive. MD was something Priest could bring to the table because of the dungeon/affix design. Instead of nerfing a class, consider the way dungeons, encounters and debuffs, etc are designed. Taking away instant radiance casts makes a class that doesn’t have a lot of instant high out put healing (reactive healing) on the move, feel very inferior to other healing classes.
PI nerf should not affect healing priests at all.
Giving healing priests a great visual spell like Ult.Pen. that lacks in power and on top of it has a 4 min. cd is not changing the fact, that so many other abilities have been removed or given a long cd.
You simply cannot balance the the whole class around one spec of it. That is like taking away HoJ/blinding light and making Sac a 2 min cd for Holy Paladin because it works too well for ret or prot for example.
