So with another season soon to dawn on us for Midnight, I would like to commend you Class Devs for acknowledging the issues that have been posted frequently across the Priest Forum. However, the solutions are not at all what we were asking for, at least for some if not most. So let’s get started shall we?
Thank you again for acknowledging how proc reliant the Spec has been. RNG has and will always be hated by Healers. STOP putting it in other healing specs. That said let’s move on to the meat and potatoes, the changes.
I like the idea of making Shadowmend a passive upgrade. However, if the numbers for Shadowmend are based on Flash Heal numbers you just took our biggest tool for saving low health targets, and turned it into a slightly wet paper bag. So testing will need to be done, having shadowmend as our “Lay on Hands” saved many people in keys that I have participated in the current season.
All of that said, you decided that the mana cost for shadowmend needs to be HIGHER?!? One of the next biggest complaints that Discipline Priests have mentioned in the Forums is our Mana Economy being absolutely abysmal, so now you want to add more Mana Issues in M+, and while raiding we may not have terrible mana Economy, we can still run oom easier than Druids, Monks, and Shamans, which seem to have a Platinum Visa Card to having an eternal amount of mana.
The changes to Void Shield are mainly positives in my eyes. I do like that you gave us way to manually proc it. I also appreciate that we can stack two charges of them. HOWEVER, you are taking a lot of our Shield power away. I get needing to ensure that the shields don’t become too powerful. But even in the current iteration, shields are not strong enough, in my opinion, to warrant lowering the reflection to 15%
The Flash Heal buff will be welcomed. However, we still need to talk about Mana Costs across the board. If we are going to be a hybrid dps healer Shield build, then we need to lower the costs of our healing spells, and I would go as far as arguing to lower our PW:S costs as well. Our tools cost to much for us to use and get so little in return. Which leads me to my next point.
I appreciate the fact that you guys are trying to incorporate Smite into our rotation. HOWEVER, Smite’s damage throughout this season has been negligible at best. But I can say that has been the case for most our damaging tools, and it also happens to be the case for one of our major CDs in Uppies. Uppies Healing? Negligible. Uppies Damage? Negligible. Uppies Overall? One of the most underwhelming CDs with a 4 min CD price tag. I will wait to see where you move Greater Smite before commenting on that. I do feel that Body and Soul also needs to be moved and not require taking Leap of Faith. Overall, if you are going to keep our Atonement low, then you need to fine tune our damage output to keep Oracle in tandem with Voidweaver.
As for the Oracle talent changes. I can understand that change. No complaints. As for the Voidweaver changes, this should allow you guys to gauge whether or not you need to adjust Atonement after these buffs. I am happy to Voidweaver Disc Priest players finally get a buff.
That’s my notes for now. I will comeback and comment as you post more updates. Though a Holy Priest Thread may be coming y’alls way soon too.
The developers have once again forgotten the 5-man Atonement Modifier. Without it, there’s no point in continuing to tune Voidweaver, because it still won’t work.
It is a step in the right direction. While I am certainly not an expert when it comes to Void Weaver Disc Priest, I have read a lot of threads regarding them, and the changes made were the items pointed out the most across the Priest Class Forum. So a small victory, but still need to keep commenting during Beta tests to get our point across.
The Shadow Mend change is an overcorrection. In light of the changes to Void Shield and Smite, I don’t think Blizzard needs to go this far.
Shadow Mend worked well as a proc imo. It had weight behind it and could “save the day”. In contrast, this new version appears inferior and substantially less interesting to use.
I would argue that the Shadowmend RNG was one of the most despised things in the Priest Forum when it was brought up. We atleast had a reliable way of getting Void Shields through Penance.
I also don’t agree with the idea of having Penance not being able to give Atonement anymore.
Every use of Penance in raid, was literally to put Atonement on a player and/or heal them if they needed it. Offensive Penance usage was strictly used in M+ to spread our SW:P Dot to trigger Shadowmend. Like, RNG has never been a healers friend in WoW. Simply put, it is despised because it locks our power behind invisible dice rolls and limits the player on what they can do in any given situation.
So I do believe that the Shadowmend being made a passive upgrade is a good thing, but if it does not have the saving power it had before, Disc Priests are going to be in for a world of hurt next Season, especially considering the line up for M+
In my mind part of the issue was how weak the rest of the kit felt, which already relied on another proc (Void Shield). Smite simply could not keep up. Otherwise, I thought Shadow Mend rewarded proactive SW:P spread and earned its keep in M+.
I don’t mind procs; however, we crossed a threshold where we depended more on procs than our base spells at times. That to me, was the main controversy of Shadow Mend; that there was no choice but to lean into proc-centric gameplay.
I would like Blizzard to retain Shadow Mend as an option for certain dungeons or damage patterns. Instead, they smoothed it down to nothing, buffed a different side of the tree, and called it a day.
I dont think it is an overcorrection, but that is going to be a wait and see kind of thing. Because I am hoping it isn’t, but when it comes to Blizzard, Hope is about as good as a wet paper bag to carry groceries.
And I don’t disagree the damage to healing output for both specs was horrible. It was mentioned in a previous thread I responded to, but a player mentioned how Disc Priest are stuck in a bit of a Paradox situation. Being a Dps to Heal class makes it that way. The problem in my mind, and the reason it felt so terrible was because our base damage spells did little to no damage.
Smite? Negligible
Penance (For offensive purposes): Negligible
Mind Blast? Negligible.
And in my personal opinion, the reason they targeted Atonement so hard was because of the Piety talent that exists in the Oracle Hero Spec. It operates far to similarly to Whispering Waves and Glimmer of Light.
And on top of that, when Blizzard did nerf our Atonement, they did not give consequential buffs to our damage spells to compensate for the loss of Healing. Not that Disc Priests were having a ridiculous amount of output this season either way. But I think they overtuned Atonement, which is why Voidweaver Disc Priests are finally getting their knobs adjusted through their Hero Spec Talents, because that spec had been dead since the last Atonement Nerf in 12.0.5. So Blizzard has some soul searching to do in my opinion.
The most damaging change in this patch is reversing the positive update made in Midnight. Allowing Penance to apply Atonement provided a natural, mana-efficient way to spread healing. Reverting this is a massive step backward.
The bigger issue is that if the developers wanted to remove that interaction, they completely ignored the Discipline mana economy. Ramping for a 20-man raid is incredibly mana-intensive, even when weaving in Penance to manage costs. Priests are currently the only healing class experiencing significant mana issues this season.
While the changes to our Apex talent are positive; giving us agency over how and when to use it is a good design choice. It also makes the Penance reversal even more confusing. Reverting Penance under the guise of removing “friction” contradicts the philosophy applied to the Apex talent.
Here is what I feel needs to be focused on moving forward.
Mana Economy: This is the absolute priority. Both Discipline and Holy can consume massive amounts of mana instantly during raid ramps, and keeping up with the high damage demands of +15 keys and mythic raiding requires far too much mana investment compared to every other healer. A large reason for this is the cost of PW Shield and its lost identity as a underwhelming ability in most situations. MOST of the time its the wrong move to use PW Shield instead of just healing the damage taken with friendly penance. Removing penance atonement and just relying on PW Shield and Radiance in the current mana economy is not something that is healthy for the spec.
Power Infusion: The removal of our ability to track friendly cooldowns creates a massive problem. If choosing whether to use Penance for damage or healing is considered “friction,” losing the tools to optimize PI is a hundred times worse.
Spec Identity: Discipline is experiencing whiplash between spot-healing and shielding while the damage aspect of the spec is entirely ignored. Spells cast on enemies feel completely unrewarding. Smite does negligible damage, Mind Blast feels terrible outside of Voidweaver, and Shadow Word: Death is useless. We are trapped in a gameplay loop dictated entirely by Power Word: Shield and defensive Penance casts. Our offensive abilities provide almost no meaningful healing in high-end content. Right now, raid healing is reduced to a rigid, punishing cycle: cast Evangelism and Power Word: Radiance to apply Atonement, use Penance defensively, and watch 20% of your mana bar vanish.
Voidweaver: I dont need to go into as much detail here since many have already done the work over the last few months doing that but Voidweaver’s rotation,talent picks, and how it all meshes together need to be revisited in the future. I personally feel this requires more work than number tuning. This requires talent tree changes and a clearer picture on what Disc is meant to be going forward.
I think the changes to disc heading into Midnight were great OVERALL but I feel the topics I highlighted above need to be discussed. In the imminent future, I think the penance change should not go through after all the work that has been doing on getting us to our current playstyle in Midnight that I feel for the most part is in a better place than it has been.
I don’t agree with that at all. The rotation as a Voidweaver is perfectly fine. The only problem is the number tuning, which is due to the missing 5-man atonement modifier.
Overcorrection or no, I have trouble reconciling with Blizzard’s solution being a two point talent investment to make a costlier flash heal work. I just don’t see that being a win.
I am curious what data Blizzard is drawing from to state there was tension over casting penance offensively. Was it worthwhile over defensive penance?
Also, based on the the proposed tier-set bonuses, Voidweaver receives the short end of the stick again. Oracle gets more Penance casts, which yields more Mind Blast CDR and therefore more Voidshields.
I see no reason to keep buffing Flash Heal. That’s not how Disc works. I don’t like Plea at all (M+, maybe in Raid it’s useful) so nerfing Penance (again!) (is it even possible keep nerfing it?) is unwelcome. Still nothing good about Mana regeneration. All of this mean is more Flash Heal (which i barely use) to get SM (at higher cost) while waiting for Void Shields
I think the penance atonement change is unnecessary. I never cast penance on someone just to put atonement on them but it was nice to remove an extra GCD I might have needed to micro-manage atonement on the person I cast penance on to heal/proc aegis on. Less frequent void shields may also make atonement more annoying where I hardly ever have to pay attention to it in S1 in a 5 man since it’s just kind of automatic along with the rest of what I’m doing as an Oracle priest.
The shadow mend change I guess is good though it looks to be about half the size of the proc version and costs 12.5k mana. It will be nice to have a useful sized heal on demand when PW:S/penance are on CD if I don’t have to drink more frequently.
If I were going to switch to priest as my main in S2 if I end up hating the MW changes I would probably need to see an improvement to mana first. As someone who plays all healing specs to some degree I find it very annoying that some specs have to start drinking frequently several tiers of difficulty lower than others and some never really need to drink at all even into higher M+ levels. Any overgeared healer can sit at 100% mana most of the time in say a M+ 10, but priests have to start drinking a lot sooner than a crane style MW (which pretty much never needs to with mana tea). A caster MW has horrendous mana in comparison also but based on the new set bonuses those will be even rarer than they are in S1.
If they’re unwilling to bring all healers into the same place in-combat mana wise they should at the very least add a mechanic like massively increases mana regen out of combat so you don’t have to stop to drink in timed dungeons while other specs don’t.
I wish they’d also do something with Ultimate Penitence. At the very least remove the 1.5 second cast time. It’s a long channel and doesn’t need a pointless additional cast time up-front.
If they want to make smite talents interesting to Oracle, make sanctuary scale with the damage of smite so the other smite talents interact with it.
Also a general priest suggestion would be to maybe change move with grace to something like your movement speed is increased by 30% while levitating. It matches the name of the talent better and helps priests with a common complaint. Alternatively, move with grace could give priests the glide ability so non-lizards could also have it. Or if we want to get crazy, have it grant glide and say that upon landing from glide you gain the effects of angelic feather.
So does the void shield change mean the deck system is expanding to 4 cards instead of 3?
33% per card down to 25%?
Meaning we could get voidshield procs like:
1000 0001 ??
I’d like clarity on this. Even with mind blast providing a void shield on demand it would still be nice to know exactly how it’s going to work
Being able to stack 2 charges will be nice though
I question how much of an impact the smite changes will have. Smite is already so minimal, especially for Oracle, and greater smite is still in a garbage location within the tree. Are the changes even worth it? Will definitely need to test it
While I don’t believe removing the Atonement application from defensive Penance is entirely detrimental, the design choice is certainly puzzling. Historically, defensive Penance has served as a primary single-target healing tool rather than an offensive filler. Removing its ability to apply Atonement strips away class complexity, especially since the spec already lacks inexpensive, reliable applicators.
To illustrate the current bottleneck, here is our baseline mana economy at level 90 (based on a 250,000 max mana pool):
Plea: 2.2% base mana
Penance (Defensive): 1.6% base mana (4,000 mana) [Atonement application removed]
Power Word: Shield: 2.0% base mana (5,000 mana)
Flash Heal / Shadow Mend: 3.2% base mana (8,000 mana)
Power Word: Radiance: 8.0% base mana (20,000 mana)
(Plea section removed, Atonement Tax was incorrect information on my part. Sorry about that)
If these scaling metrics hold true, stripping Penance of its Atonement application leaves Discipline Priests with no reliable, cost-efficient tool to spread baseline Atonements outside of a rigid Evangelism ramp window. This change severely harms our flexibility and needs to be reverted immediately.
Furthermore, Blizzard needs to look at lowering the baseline costs of our healing kit entirely. When you combine the resource investment required for both the ramp window and the actual healing throughput, it is no surprise that Discipline Priests are running out of mana so quickly.
Other healing classes feature robust, built-in resource management tools—such as Restoration Druid’s extensive cost-reduction nodes or Restoration Shaman’s passive mana-return mechanics. Discipline deserves similar kit support. At this point, the community would highly welcome the return of Power Word: Solace and Symbol of Hope. If Symbol of Hope is brought back, its mana return should arguably be restricted strictly to the Priest, given that external classes already enjoy a much higher return on investment for their own mana bars.
Based on current community sentiment, I have to disagree. Throughout the Priest forums, Voidweaver Discipline players have been consistently pleading their case that their throughput numbers need to be improved. While it looks like Blizzard missed a prime opportunity to buff the flat healing multiplier on Voidheart, I am curious to see if the other incoming tuning adjustments will be enough to revitalize the rest of the kit. In particular, Void Infusion has been a constant focal point of community discussion, and its scaling will likely dictate whether these changes actually succeed.
At this point, it feels like there isn’t a cohesive game plan. The way this patch is being cobbled together reminds me entirely of Captain Cold’s quote from The Flash: “Make the plan. Execute the plan. Expect the plan to go off the rails. Throw away the plan.”
I heavily disagree with the decision to increase the mana cost of Flash Heal / Shadow Mend. As emphasized previously, our specialization lacks a robust return on investment (ROI) regarding resource management tools. Frankly, if Blizzard solves this by simply tossing more passive mana-management talent nodes into our already congested Spec Tree instead of fixing baseline costs, it will be incredibly frustrating.
Furthermore, the focus on forcing offensive Penance usage completely misinterprets how the class actually plays. In the current sandbox, offensive Penance serves exactly one specific purpose: spreading Shadow Word: Pain to fish for Shadow Mend procs in Mythic+ environments. The upcoming changes to Shadow Mend already remedy that loop, making offensive Penance redundant there. Outside of that niche dungeon scenario, your primary job in a raid environment is to use Penance defensively for direct healing and Atonement value—period.
To illustrate exactly what we are dealing with, I am posting the upcoming Tier Set bonuses below so I can address the specific comment regarding how they stack up:
I have been meaning to write a comprehensive critique of the upcoming Tier Set, and now is the perfect time to address it.
I completely agree that this set heavily favors the Oracle hero spec, primarily due to the 2-piece bonus. Oracle naturally has two charges of Penance, whereas Voidweaver only has one. To level the playing field, Blizzard needs to implement a baseline method for Voidweaver Discipline Priests to gain that second charge of Penance as well.
While it is definitely a positive change to see the raw damage and healing numbers of Penance go up, stripping its Atonement application means players will now be highly hesitant to use it defensively.
If Blizzard grants Voidweaver that crucial second charge of Penance, the 4-piece bonus actually becomes incredibly strong. Since Mind Blast is already a core part of our rotational priority in both hero specs, the 4-piece bonus earns a solid A+. However, due to the recent mechanical nerfs and the lack of a second Penance charge for Voidweaver, the 2-piece bonus sits at a disappointing B.
This is quintessentially how our rotational cadence will function going forward. Under baseline conditions with Mind Blast on a 9-second cooldown, we will naturally see a higher uptime on Void Shields. However, once you factor in the new Tier Set bonuses, the gap between the hero specs widens: Oracle Discipline Priests will see their Mind Blast cooldown reduced to a swift 5 seconds, whereas Voidweaver sits behind at a 7-second cooldown loop.
As for the incoming Smite adjustments, we will simply have to wait and see how the tuning lands. Throughout the current season, Smite’s raw damage output has been incredibly negligible. The only reason it saw heavy usage in our priority rotation was because players used it to fish for Surge of Light procs; its actual contribution to baseline Atonement healing and overall DPS was minimal at best.
I really love to see voidweaver get buffs, but I still think they should add back the atonement dungeon modifier. Mythic plus atonement healing suffers severely when tuning is aimed at raid.
The fact that it hasn’t come back is disheartening for y’all. Like Voidweaver Priests got quintessentially screwed by the Atonement nerfs, and the fact that Blizzard did nothing for y’all all season is ridiculous.
I just looked up the set bonus before you responded lol, but yes, it’s going to benefit Oracle more.
I won’t say I dislike the set bonuses for Oracle, a void shield proc every 5 seconds would be nice and really help smooth out those bad RNG windows where we have no SM procs and no void shields.
I still feel bad for voidweaver players though. I was never a big fan of it myself but this entire season has been Oracle only, and next season seems like it’s leaning that way as well.
I just hope Blizzard doesn’t nerf Oracle to make VW look better by contrast and actually addresses the issues Voidweaver has instead
ALSO, address our mana issues! It’s frustrating to watch every other healer play as if mana doesn’t exist for them (because it mostly doesn’t), meanwhile I’m over here in a 16 key telling my team “I’M OOM, KILL THE BOSS NOW!!”
If they nerf Oracle any further, Disc Priests are going to lose their minds. We are not an S-tier spec right now. Neither Disc Specs are. And you can tell by the notes they really went after Resto Druid after their resounding success this season.
Though I already have a feeling who are going to be in the Meta for next season anyways, especially for M+.
To me all of these changes actually sound good, I don’t know why people say they’re using penance defensively in M+, I do too sometimes but it’s rare I mostly use it offensively and it does about 10-12k dps overall, most of the time I keep people alive with void shield plus trickle of atonement healing is good enough to keep people alive in +19s and PWS+SM when someone is taking huge amounts of damage with a penance weaved in between. My biggest issue this season is that Void shield can overlap on players, I wish when I use void shield twice the second one would go to the people that are not affected by it and then overlap on the third target. So many times I use void shield twice back to back and might cover only 4 people even though it’s 6 targets. Everything else I’ve actually been enjoying this season planning for top 1%. Oh and the mana issue in certain dungeons, I run a pet build with snipe so mana issue isn’t that big but some dungeons that don’t have ads or trash are more harsh on my mana.
