Blizzard is perfect in every decision they make are they? Never realized they are incapable of making a poor decision that lead to a cascading effect of multiple failures.
The point being, that just because Blizzard decrees it, does not make it right or correct. I would like specific examples as to what led to that choice. Because from my perspective, it was a vital tool in the priest class. They removed the tool and Shadow specifically has suffered.
Think about it, our class is designed to be very immobile, donât have very good defensives or immunities, removed our sudo stealth with âspectral guiseâ. What we are good at is very easily shut down as we need to cast to survive via leech. So my Argument is that a defensive dispel is a very crucial aspect to our overall toolkit as a priest and for survivability. Also, if it is an only self dispel then thatâs acceptable and ill be content with that. It was that also at one point if I recall.
All Iâm asking is that since we are attempting to return to class fantasy instead of tunneling into spec fantasy, that a Defensive dispel is worth taking another look at.
To outright just say nah man move on is short sighted and frankly quite pretentious.
As a long time Holy Priest, I canât help but feel a little disappointed in the talent trees presented here.
Priest General Tree
Connections: Compared to the Druid and Death Knight trees, there are far fewer âcross connections,â especially in the mid and late level areas. The left side is completely separate; obviously this hinders every possibility for customization and creative builds.
Missed Opportunities: I was excited for the possibility of Silence being in the General tree. Seeing what I would have to give up in exchange to able to provide interrupt support in dungeons was an enticing part of the new talent system, but it seems I wonât have the chance. I was hoping for the return of Spectral Guise as a form of survivability and utility.
Holy Word: Life: Since this is a âHoly Wordâ spell, I suppose itâs supposed to entice me as a Holy Priest, but it feels confusing. Does it interact with the âHoly Word systemâ of cooldown reduction? If not, why is it named as it is? If so, why is in the general tree? Holy Word: Serenity is supposed to be our miraculous single-target heal; what is Holy Word: Life for? The design space here seems to be âmake an opposite Shadow Word: Death, where the caster still gets hurt for using it improperly,â rather than âwhat is a niche spell that would make a cool and valuable capstone ability.â
Holy Nova: Holy Nova is currently required to get into the mid tree on the left side. Holy Nova has been underwhelming for years; it has utility, but thereâs no way to opt-out of it with the way the tree is. If itâs going to be on this side of the tree, give it synergy with the other spells on that side: have it increase the healing/speed of Renew on the targets it heals, have it increase the damage/speed of Shadow Word: Pain, or have it cause Prayer of Mending to jump.
Clericâs Armaments and Tools of the Cloth: Why are these talents here in the tree? The branch including Charitable Soul and culminating in Crystalline Reflection makes far more sense to include these. If theyâre going to be placed where they are, why isnât Tools of the Cloth a connecting point to Charitable Soul to more easily facilitate a full Power Word: Shield build with Holy Nova?
Power Infusion: I know there are a lot of posts expressing concerns about Power Infusion. As Holy, I like it as it is from a utility standpoint. I like to feel like I can contribute to a groupâs overall damage, and a damage throughput external is fairly unique. This seems like it needs to be a choice node, or Power Infusion needs moved. Maybe swap it with Mass Dispel, maybe move it to its own mini-branch and tie it more closely in position to Twins of the Sun Priest.
Angelâs Mercy, Lightâs Inspiration, Translucent Image: Can we get these personal survivability talents moved earlier in the tree? Why are they so hard to get to? They definitely donât feel like a pay off to long investment in a particular branch, and they seem like something that would be useful to have while leveling. Angelâs Mercy is currently available at level 25! If you make a beeline to it, the earliest you can have it now is 28, and I suspect no one would prioritize it in such a way.
Holy Priest Tree
Flash Concentration: As others have said, very disappointed to not see some version of Flash Concentration in the tree. I loved playing around the Wrath of the Lich King implementation of Serendipity (When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 20% and mana cost reduced by 20%. Stacks up to 2 times. Lasts 20 sec), and Flash Concentration gave me that same feeling of controlled, purposeful single target healing.
Divine Conversation, Light of the Naaru, and Holy Oration: Divine Concentration (Your Holy Words begin Divine Conversation, increasing the cooldown reduction of your next Holy-Word-affecting spell by 15 sec.) is great. I really enjoy deciding which Holy Word cooldown reducing spell to cast for the empowered amount of reduction. It encourages use of Holy Word: Chastise for the purposes of reducing the healing Holy Words. Itâs an interesting opportunity cost. Light of the Naaru and Holy Oration are both passive increases to the amount of reduction our Holy Word affecting spells offer; do we really need two passives that do this? Perhaps a choice node with a Divine Conversation like option?
Renew the Faith: With Divine Hymn being talented, I was looking forward to the possibility of Renew the Faith (While Divine Hymn is active, Prayer of Mending jumps to a new target every 1 sec without consuming any charges.) returning.
Hymns and Holy Words: When considering additional Hymn related talents, adding a branching node with a talent that reduces the cooldown of our Holy Words by an amount for each second we channel one of our Hymns would be a nice way to tie them in.
Rune of Healing/Mending/Fire: These nodes donât feel exciting, especially based on how far down in the tree they are placed. Actually, they feel pretty lame as penultimate tier talents.
Missing Covenant Spells
Boon of the Ascended was a great way to add a bit of extra AOE damage to a group. Iâll miss having the option, but some of the boosts to Holy Fire in the right side branch of the Holy tree look interesting.
I will sorely miss Fae Guardians. Itâs a wonderful utility knife. Damage reduction on the tank in a big pull. Mana regeneration during a lull in the action. Personal or external cooldown reduction as needed. I would love for it to find a place, renamed or restyled as needed, into the Holy tree.
No where did I say they were perfect in every decision they made. My argument wasnât, âBlizzard removed it and therefore they are right.â
I simply said Blizzard removed it, and I agree with them, Iâm glad they removed it because no DPS should have a magic dispel. It SHOULD only belong to healers, which it currently does outside of Mass Dispel which is a cast and is on a decent cooldown (also had significant mana cost)
The class is very immobile, youâre right, but we also provide a lot of support. Our self healing, Vampiric Embrace healing, Void Shift, Mass Dispel, etc. The defensive ability isnât too bad, though. Dispersion with the heal talented is really good, and itâs on a relatively short cooldown. You also got Greater Fade which is a 3 second immunity on a 45 second cooldown, which is REALLY strong.
I donât really play Shadow, Iâll be honest, I main Discipline Priest, but yeah I do miss Spectral Guise. I wouldnât mind having that back for the both of us as a talent maybe.
Actually there is a talent that is somewhat a version of Serendipity. While you are above 75% hp Flash heal, Heal and PoH cast time is 20% faster.
I feel we are moving towards an AoE healing style back again.
We have a talent that makes PoH cast time 20% faster (When weâre above 75%hp) and also we can have Prayer of circle talent for extra 25% faster cast time on PoH (It has 2 points but it doesnât add more value so idk if itâll be more than 25%).
Thatâs nearly 50% faster cast time on PoH.
Besides that renew getting buffed might mean weâll use it more that makes sanctify in a lower cd. Circle of heal reducing sanctify cd too if talented and Divine words gives as an AoE ground healing effect. Plus holy oration and Light of the naaru for extra cdr on Sanctify.
I can see spaming Sanctifies a lot this expansion and Iâm really into that gameplay.
This is all speculating, we need to see how good PoH numbers will be in Dragonflight.
â It would be nice if Resonant Words also buffs our next PoH
Yes you have stated this. My question is simply⌠Why? In what situation would Shadow having a defensive Dispel or even a self only defensive dispel that doesnât have a cast time come across as a concept that should not even be entertained? What example can you provide that shows how bad this is and then to justify its removal or non access to it?
Again, my argument is based around the fact that with the lack of âtypeâ of defensives⌠Cant kite, can snare without snaring ourselves, no immunities puts us in a very vulnerable spot. Every other DPS spec has some or mix of those examples at their disposals. As Shadow, yes we can leech heal⌠if we can free cast. But you cant expect to have a moment to get that off because we cant get a moment to do so.
You have to compare Shadow to the Warlock and Mage classes. We are the Clothies and as such when we get hit, we take a lot of damage. Mages have chain CC and Kiting + can burst on demand with lots of instant cast and roots. Warlocks can use Demonic Gateway / circle or use pets to prevent someone from stopping your cast, or pop damage immunity and getting whatever cast off they want⌠and they can also self dispel themselves with a petâŚ
Singe
Burns harmful spells, removing 1 harmful Magic effect from an ally.
Auto-Cast: 15 sec cooldown
Cast upon master when he is unable to cast spells due to a Magic effect.
So that there already counters your argument that no DPS should have a defensive dispel.
Why cant a priest have it? If itâs so broken as you stated⌠it should be incredibly easy to list at least 1 specific situation that is so obviously broken that there is no argument to be had at all. If you cannot, then I think that speaks for itself as to why such an ability should at least be considered in giving back to Shadow.
Iâve already explained it. The short cooldown that healers have is on an 8 second cooldown. You give this to Shadow and theyâre the only DPS spec that can fully dispel all magic debuffs and magical CC.
You do have an immunity, you have Greater Fade which is one of the BEST immunities. You can literally Greater Fade someoneâs burst, on a 45 second cooldown. You have Psyfiend which also snares and reduces healing by 50%. Psyfiend at one point was kinda bad because it had 1 health, but it was buffed sometime ago to have more health.
Not sure if you read one of the new talents for Shadow either, but one of them allows all of your damaging spells to not break your Fear. You can also Mind Control enemies away from you. If you take Surrender to Madness, you can kite pretty well. You can cast while moving, and letâs not forget Void Volley PvP talent which also protects you from melee when you enter void form. Itâll spout out a bunch of these void bolts at random spots near you which will horrify enemies (doesnât break on damage and has no diminishing return) and youâre pretty much safe for a bit.
No one is going to run Imp though. Youâre either running Succubus, Felguard for Demonology warlocks, or youâre running Felhunter for the interrupt.
And the keyword of that spell that you just linked, is that it will remove ONE, not all, but ONE magic effect from an ally.
If you somehow donât think that an 8 second cd magic dispel for Shadow Priests is busted, then I donât know what to tell you. Youâre just refusing to see how thatâs busted, and not just for cc purposes, but for everything magical related. (I can already imagine GFade into dispel against an Affliction Warlock)
Itâs not really the same thing though. Serendipity and Flash Concentration create a cadence. A strategic sequence that you have to work in and work around. Back in the Wrath of the Lich King days, I used to think of it as Throughput vs Sustainability âgears,â like gears of a car while driving. Heal spam was cheap, but not particularly high HPS. Flash Heal->Heal->Repeat offered quick initial hits, but split efficiency with HPS. Flash Heal->Flash Heal->Heal->Repeat was more mana, but benefited from quick, fully Serendipity buffed Heals. And Flash Heal spam was high HPS, but hardly sustainable for any length of time. Which âgearâ I was in depended on the amount of incoming damage and how important it was to get the target back to full health.
Granted Flash Concentration isnât nearly so complex, but I enjoy working in that Flash Heal in between Heals to keep it rolling. Hoping for that Surge of Light proc and getting it just in time is so satisfying, as is successfully keeping Flash Concentration at full stacks for an entire fight.
Unwavering Will will either be so easy to achieve, it might as well be passive, or so difficult that it will feel like a pain to maintain. That will all depend on actual damage vs healing numbers and scaling. At best, it will make me check my health before healing another target and, if there is enough time, heal myself before healing them. Which isnât much of a cadence.
Edit:
Itâs also a design thatâs contrary to what I would actually want. I suppose it would be fine for healing in a small group, where a tank is taking most of the damage, but in a raid, where everyone just took a large AOE hit, I want that haste to get Prayer of Healing off. There are raid mechanics where a random subset of targets get smacked with some non-trivial amount of damage; I want that haste to spot heal with Flash Heal or Heal and bring those targets back up out of the danger zone. Unwavering Will just seems like it is designed to be there when things are fine and always let you down when you need it.
Correct. I still donât see that as a valid argument. Why cant we? We had it before in the past and I never heard anything about how OP it was. I was both a Priest and faced Priests on other classes without issue.
âDoesnât appear to make interrupts miss.â
âPlayers can no longer interact with flags in Arathi Basin when Greater Fade is active.â
âItâs strong, but you canât use it while cc:d and hostile action breaks the effect so not really a bubble.â
Its a liability. Better then nothing, but I would much prefer a Magic dispel to get out of a frost nova or roots.
Yet magic dispels from others can break it just fine, warriors still have berserker rage etc. Fear was never an issue of breaking from our own damage⌠did it happen? sure but the main way it was broken was either PvP trinket or other class abilities. So other classes can remove our way of CC but we cant remove magic CC? I donât get how you cant see the double sided nature of the issue here. As long as others can do what they want its okay, but if you have a tool stop them them i.e. remove a dots or other negative effects from you or your ally then thatâs not okay. Again, we are priests first. It should be apart of our toolkit. Just because it inconveniences others does not make it a solid argument for its removal.
I am not going to even entertain the Voidform argument, the idea that Voidform in PvP is even brought up is laughable. You can just put 1 stun or silence/interrupt on the priest in Voidform and he just wasted his 2 min CD because he cant kite to avoid the interrupt or CC with root or snare to make good use of it.
Then they should just remove it from Imp since no one uses it right? Cause thatâs what your saying right? Yes they have it but its near uselessness? Fine give me a 1 magic debuff self dispel. We had it in the past that way and then rank 2 gave 2 magic debuff removal. I also want the OPTION like the warlock. But it should be a class/spec ability Not PvP only.
If the ability to remove magic debuffs is so busted. Why do Healers have it? What is the argument why they are allowed to do it but a Shadow Priest canât? What cause we can do damage? Great, so can other classes. They can do damage and if I have the ability to nullify that damage or CC then thatâs just the nature of fighting a priest.
Great so then the warlock needs to take that into consideration when fighting a priest. Just like he does when fighting a Holy Priest.
I am not saying we need the exact tool in its current implementation baseline. I just want to ability to defensively dispel magic instantly so I can do so on the move.
No searing nightmare spam back, please o please no. Getting mass pulls followed by spamming mind sear + searing nightmare every pack is not a good time.
spriest being able to spec into 30s silence, a 30s stun, and a 30s fear that can potentially not break on damage is going to be tremendously broken in arena. lol
Thatâs because it was a different game back then, and cc worked differently then how it does now. With how homogenized cc is and what CC falls into what category, having a dispel on yourself and for allies, breaking them out of magical cc every 8 seconds, would be busted. CC lasted way longer back then and also fell into different categories.
Imagine having one of the best immunities in game but still managing to complain. Its on a 45 second cooldown, Iâd argue its THE strongest immunity because you canât do anything about it. Any paladin immunities for instance can be broken, even bubble, if you Mass Dispel or Shattering Throw. Greater Fade may still be able to get hit with the interrupt, but all damaging spells will miss.
Warrior can break your fear on a cooldown, they canât dispel others from it either. Berserker Rage is on a 1 minute cooldown. You can remove CC as well with Mass Dispel which is on a 45 second cooldown. You CAN remove magic CC, donât say you cant when you literally can.
You already do. Mass Dispel. Mass Dispel yourself. You can also Cure Disease on yourself and allies, pretty useful against Unholy DKs.
Void Volley is the best honor talent for Shadow Priest when it comes to fighting melee though. Youâre ignoring the best PvP talent for them? Alright man choose to see it your way.
I guess youâre getting that Shadow Priest CAN kite with Surrender to Madness, which literally allows them to cast while moving lol.
Itâs only busted if itâs a DPS spec thatâs doing it. Healers have it because itâs necessary for them. Itâs literally their job to dispel magic. Thats exactly why Blizzard homogenized all of the dispels and gave every healer a magic dispel.
Again, youâre forgetting that Shadow Priest technically does have a magic dispel with Mass Dispel, youâre just refusing to see that.
I could maybe, MAYBE, get behind being able to DISPEL YOURSELF from magic, but having a magic dispel, on an 8 second cooldown that you can cast not only on yourself but allies, is busted.
Itâs exactly why youâre only going to be able to dispel disease next expansion, as it should.
All you are stating is whatâs happening today with how things currently are. You havenât actually gave me any examples as to WHY we donât have a single target instant cast self magic dispel anymore (when we once did).
All you provided were general blanket statements that it will be OP. Says who? Why? What matter of events happened that led to that conclusion. You are âAssumingâ Shadow can no longer instant cast defensive dispel because it can be overpowered. How did you come to that conclusion? What âspecificâ examples can you provide?
Mind you, I am not saying your not wrong. However, I tend to not take things at face value just because. I want to see the series of events that lead to this outcome. If those donât exist⌠then it was just a lazy blanket f Shadow lets just remove it so we donât have to consider or hear about the rest of people complaining. That is where I think this all stems from⌠laziness. Not from an actual âbalancingâ issue. Itâs a simple lazy excuse at the cost of the Priest Class most signature ability⌠Dispel Magic both offensive and defensive and in this case Shadow specifically getting shafted over not having it without any examples as to why.
See the âband aidâ spell interactions you listed are just that⌠band aids. If we had our dispel, all those abilities would never need to exist. What happened was they took away shadows instant cast defensive ability and as a result Shadow lost a key component that lead to cascading failures that then prompted them to keep coming up with these band aid fixes.
Its the same with Voidform, they gutted Shadow when they introduced Voidform and every since the spec has had nothing but issues going on for 3 expansions. Not to mention that they just totally redesigned the spec to fit a theme and as a result completely broke how the spec functions and aliened myself and many others from what we want in that spec which was a âpriestlyâ motif but on the dark side⌠the shadows. Not this Old God Void crap.
My point is, they seem to just make these changes for changes sake and I really donât think they actually consider the fallout of there decisions as I firmly believe they donât understand the Spec as evidence in the last 3 expansions.
I agree with you re: Flash Concentration and Fae Guardians.
While I know it was polarising, I enjoyed managing Flash Concentration stacks and having something to maintain and think about in order to empower my heals. I acknowledge that there is a similar-ish talent in the General Priest Tree called âUnwavering Willâ that is a passive reduction to the cast time to a number of heals, but I will miss Flash Concentration as it was. I know many others will be happy to see it not featured, though!
I really enjoyed Fae Guardians, too. I liked the âsupporting othersâ feel that Holy Priest could have if you were Night Fae.
I guess weâll see how things develop as we get closer to release. As a sort of âmiddle of the roadâ player I do feel a bit ho-hum about Holy Priest in Dragonflight, but I am keeping an open mind.
yeah if you read my initial postâŚit is obvious that i like PIâŚgive it to pumpers in pve âŚfor soloingâŚand for pvpâŚthe only reason anyone would want to get rid of it is because they dont like to give it to other people in a team environment (which is absurd). I mean what type of team player doesnt want to help the raid perform better? It is crazy to even think that way.
I tend to agree, it doesnât feel like a spectacular/impactful end of tree talent like Apotheosis or Holy World: Salvation are in the current tree.
I am not against the return of Lightwell (I agree it hasnât always been useful or well liked in its various iterations) but perhaps it could be pushed further up the tree and maybe the range of effect could do with an increase? I suppose weâll have to see how much healing it ends up doing but at the moment it doesnât feel terribly exciting to me.
Something caps has pointed out before here, is that such a leggo or ability denies you the full use of your toolkit. Holy has tradionally used a full toollkit, especially in WoD when you would use PoH in sanct chakra or renew binding heal etc in serenity chakra. FC locks you into kinda a one trick pony which is what holy was never meant to be
also overlooking the other synergies out there⌠proc twist of fate and hit divine hymn for example
Yeah, I think so. Youâre not wrong. I wrote my criticism mainly from the viewpoint of a raider.
Thatâs what I was thinking, yeah. Just like those talents that enhance abilities when the Priest is shielded. If I go all into melee range to use Holy Nova, my shield for enhancing the Nova will usually be gone instantly⌠because Iâm in melee range of adds and might get a lot of damage.
Unwavering Will might work if you keep Serenity up before a big group AoE hits, use it to top yourself and then start healing the group. But thatâs a wasted GCD that other healers already use to stabilize the group and in some really heavy AoE phases, like with Lords of Dread or the soaking of orbs in Rygelon intermission, we might not even be able to stay above 70%. Thatâs such a weird talent.
Yeah, idk. I already explained why it doesnât feel good and can be a pain sometimes. If you choose to ignore it and want to pretend like everybody who doesnât like the design is just being an egoist, I can live with that.