After some thought I would like to object to surge of insanity being the proc from halo. Its just really unwieldy in the sense that archon makes it so halo will be an extra amp during one minute/two minute windows and making every halo cast give 3 surge of insanity procs means that your 1 minute bursts now have a massive resource glut of spells you need to get out that are all casted and it also rises the priority of using surge of insanity procs because after halo you get one 5 seconds later you get another and 5 seconds later you get one that will over cap so after halo you have 10 seconds to use at least one stack possibly and even likely you will actually need to spend two since you are using it in cds and 2 devouring plagues in that time frame is common even that is a pretty big ask if you are using mind flay this is made even worse since shadow priest cds tend to push different priorities like imagine prioritizing surge over mindblast/swd during mindbender or just managing all of that with void bolt as well.
The easiest solutions I can see are changing the proc to thought harvester or death speaker but in both cases there would need to be modifiers to make them feel good. In the case of thought harvester the proc would need to be made beefier to not feel bad, while for death speaker it could use something like last seasonâs 2 set or a modifier to sanity generation and possibly the ability to hold two stacks to account for the existence of the talentâs natural procs. Alternatively if its kept as surge make it instant cast/hasted for mind spike/mind flay respectively the issue after all is not being able to spend bonus resources fast enough.
Of the two above I would be more inclined for a deathspeaker proc for the simple reason that holy has access to shadow word death and you could actually get a mix of holy and shadow by having it be âwhen halo get deathspeaker AND surge of light procâ which would be interesting if nothing else.
Either way Iâd say gameplay wise the tree could use some work but I actually like the potential of the tree in the sense that it gives shadow some damage against things that arenât dotted and has a distinctly different damage profile from voidweaver. I also like it for holy for reasons that arenât just âit isnât oracle.â Theme seems weak however. Also hate to say it but halo just isnât an exciting button its been a high candidate for buttons I wouldnât care if blizzard removed all expansion and seeing it centerpiece in a hero talent tree is almost inherently disappointing. Despite this the tree makes halo an interesting button I just donât know if halo being an interesting button is worth an entire hero tree as the opportunity cost when halo being made interesting could just be like a generic capstone instead for the actual tree.
I was thinking the same thing. The void contains all possibilities so it makes more sense for an Oracle to see all ends and calculate probability to predict the most likely outcome. Build it around personal buffs and mind Blast chance on procs for shadow. I donât seen Halo as a very useful spell for shadow except for slight healing of allies. For Disc it could be great for healing and damage and also could make it reapply Atonement to allies.
Surge of insanity needs to just go at this point imo.
The normal way to trigger it requires 2 Devouring Plagues and that is just nonsense. No one likes keeping track of every other Devouring Plague grants proc. So now you have to keep track of each Halo created grants a charge as well as the juggling of Devouring Plagues on top of weaving in your Insanity spell procs before you accidentally get another proc while also worrying about movement and interrupt mechanics or in PvP in even being able to get the cast off in the first place multiple times.
Insanity as it was introduced in WoD was simple and solved the single target damage issue that we had in MoP. But they have gone well past the point of over design as this point and I really think itâs best to remove it or regress it to make it more simplified again⌠but that would change the Archon talents which begs the question why make the change at all if you know it will require further work on the Archon tree. Which leads me to believe they will not be addressing the Insanity mechanic and it will remain in its less than savory form.
Also, the damage Halo will deal is not going to scale well for Shadow due to our mastery. We loose out on major portions of our damage when our dots are not on the targets. So beyond the small group of targets that have our dots on them, I suspect that Halo will deal less than ideal damage to everything else it manages to hit outside our cluster of dotted up targets.
Iâm just hoping to hear/see the Priest Class and Shadow tree getting reworked and see what new and different things they might add to our toolkit and then MAYBE things will flow better from how the Archon tree is setup to work with our other talents.
Because as it stands now, it just seems like either the devs are not understanding something or we are missing a critical piece of the picture in terms of upcoming changes that only the internal devs know are coming.
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if all of this goes into beta with no changesâŚ
All I gotta say is, welp one more year to hope they do it right.
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on the point of mastery I was actually thinking that would push archon toward void form since halo would then get full value of mastery alongside more burst, but even so I tend to agree that I am also just waiting for the next rework ever since they reworked it in s2. Shadow priest to me is defined by having no mobility cooldowns of note but having a great deal of instant cast abilities and strong stutter stepping power to enable movement the more turrety the spec gets the less I want to play it. The other thing is dot focus and blizzard just seems set in never letting dots shine again because one raid a tier will be imbalanced or something.
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To me, I think itâs silly to have a Voidweaver hero talent path and it not having Voidform as the obvious best cooldown to use in conjunction.
The same for Archon in it should be Dark Ascension being the obvious choice.
But I find myself actually seeing Dark Ascension being better for Voidweaver and Voidform better for Archon in some regards. Obviously would need to test it out when I get the chance.
Yes I think they just need to stop trying to fix this problem and just accept the fact that dot classes will just do better on council fights and to move on.
This constant circumvention of trying to design dot classes to not have any power in dots is just causing far too much frustration for multiple classes and ends up not being fun to play and they struggle in areas they need not be.
Like in PvP for example, in the past it was fine to get trained on as Shadow as you just needed to get your dots out and they can at least do some work even if your being locked down. But now we still are easily locked down yet our dots donât do anything unless we hard cast spells⌠But we canât because we are being locked down.
Casters specs like Shadow and Affliction at least should not be constantly afflicted with bad or unfun gameplay due to having a big portion of our damage coming from dots.
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From the holy perspective, feels like a solid upgrade, even if thereâs no âthatâs so coolâ addition to it.
I really like that it finally gives us something for AoE healing when the group is spread out, moving, or worst: spread out and moving.
My main concern is if they donât tack on some sort of âhalo heals for 50% when not in a raidâ it might end up being as useless for mythic+ as Divine Hymn is.
Biggest miss here I think is with the name/description: the halo themes and talents make a solid spec more solid and cover some weakness gaps, but do very little to make you feel like youâre achieving an âultimate formâ and 10% more healing when in Apothesis doesnât quite match it either. (That said, Iâd rather they change the description of what archon is supposed to be than they change the talents to, idk, +40% healing when in sparkle holyform. Maybe they just need to change the hero tree name to something like Surgeweaver.)
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Iâm really just going to reserve proper judgement until I get the chance to play a more finished build at TWW launch, and hopefully see some positive changes within the first content patch, but itâs reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaallllly hard to put any faith into anything until we see how these play, and how they tune everything. I honestly donât think that any of these hero talents are particularly awful other than than discâs oracle kit, but looking at them in a pvp space, I see that there will be issues with many of the abilities, and I also have a very pessimistic outlook on numbers tuning when they are âfinalizedâ hero talent trees.
At this point I think the best potential things to happen to priest (in pvp at least) are going to be how they tune the OTHER classes hero talents and kit: If we see more of this mobility/cc/melee uptime/bloated abilities continue in their trend upward, itâs bad news, but if they reign them in more and make meaningful changes to bring things down a few notches, itâll be fantastic.
Hope for the best (despite 20 years of wow) and prepare for the worst.
They shouldâve just made hero talents based off individual specs and not trying to jam them between different specs.
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So some thoughts to consider for Archon.
So since Archon is going to be (currently) centered around Halo, then perhaps some inspiration of ideas from references can be considered.
- Microsoft Halo game = Halo, Faith, prophets etc.
- Diablo games = Angelic, Archangel etc.
- StarCraft games = Archon, Psionic etc.
Not to mention you can see plenty of Holy and light and Shadow and Void based themes and spells from the new zone and dungeons released in alpha for reference in addition to what they have established in prior expansions and also what we have yet to see as a community that they are cooking up.
So a lack of inspiration to draw from is just inexcusable and as such, I think they can do so much better if they really tried.
Some ideas of mineâŚ
To achieve the feeling of an Archon and becoming your ultimate self.
Visuals
- When going into your ultimate form, you have a cool visual Halo above your head that radiates each time you create a Halo.
- When going into your ultimate form, you sprout wings made up of the hard light crystal visual effect you see from Naaru where each piece of the wing is floating and disconnected from the others.
- While going into your ultimate form, you float above the ground. (on the fence about this one as it may look cool and thematic, but if you canât jump similar to when Levitating, it could get annoying quickly).
- These light effects from the Halo above your head and Wings should have that radient glow effect similar to what you see with the Priest tier set effects going into TWW that was recently revealed.
Mechanics
Talents
- Archon (Replaces Dark Ascension, Void Eruption, Apotheosis)
You Ascend into your ultimate form becoming an Archon, increasing your healing and damage by 25% and your direct healing and damage critical strikes deal an additional 100% extra healing and damage for 15 seconds.
OR
Casting Halo puts you into your ultimate form becoming an Archon, increasing your healing and damage by 25% and your direct healing and damage critical strikes deal an additional 100% extra healing and damage for 15 seconds.
What happens to the cooldown effects that were replaced
- Either baked into Archon or reworked with possible talent rework.
Archon Form Inspiration explained
- Similar to Druid of the Claw in granting sudo damage and tanking for different roles and in this case wanted the effect to enhance both Healing and Damage for both Holy and Shadow. This allows Holy to deal Burst damage and Shadow to have a moment to deal supporting heals as needed.
- Similar to Frostfire Bolt where itâs not the Keystone talent but still transforms different spells into the same spell.
- Makes balancing for Shadow at least easy since it doesnât matter what cooldown spell you pick as both will be upgraded to the same thing.
- Critical effect similar to the old Shadow Power talent in granting your critical strikes to deal 100% more damage.
- Light as a feather
While in your Archon form, you are immune to movement suppressing effects.
OR
While in your Archon form, any movement suppressing effect you are afflicted with gets reversed and instead becomes a movement enhancing effect for the same amount.
- Surge of Power
When your Halo hits a target affected by your Renew or Shadow Word: Pain, increase the healing and damage of Surge of Light or Surge of Insanity by 100%, lasts 10 seconds.
- Words have Power
- Holy: While in your Archon form, your Serenity can stack by 1 additional amount and casting Halo causes your Surge of Light to grant an additional stack of Holy Word: Serenity for 10 seconds.
- Shadow: While in your Archon form, your Deathspeaker effect can stack up to 2 and creating a Halo causes your Surge of Insanity to grant an additional stack of Deathspeaker for 10 seconds.
PvP talents
- Angelic Ascension (Replaces Divine Ascension)
While in your Archon form, You ascend into the air out of harmâs way. While floating, your spell range is increased by 50%.
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Agreed, Iâm still hoping they just expand and refine our existing talent trees during the next Exp instead.
Maybe, but if they did that we would have 0 choice and would just have whatever hero talent they made for our spec.
I mean its still zero choice in a way.
Holy youbwould only go archon really. Oracle does not exist.
For shadow see no reason why you would choose archon over voidweaver
Disc same bost no 2nd option, sononly go voidweaver
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Well they would have more freedom creating hero classes that donât have to work with entirely different specs, ability to create more Hero classes in future.
Archon might end up getting picked for shadow simply because it will out perform Voidweaver.
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If overhealing is that bad drop healer.
I know ill probably pick up archon for raid, because I enjoy the offhealing aspect of shadow
to me in pvp.
Archon is prop the worst one. there are some ok talents but halo pretty much destroies CC chains. Also the extra cast sucks.
the cc it offers is pretty much irrelevant in PVP these days.
Really at the end of the day which hero tree sims the best is what people are going to be using⌠and/or whatever WoWhead says in their guide.