Would you appreciate the option to talent into mind flay as a smite replacement on the class tree to lean into shadow covenant a bit more?
It would be simple enough to implement. Add flay to the right of shadowfiend and give it to shadow baseline. For symmetry add something to the left for holy and then give disc dispel magic or purify disease baseline.
Idk how people feel but honestly. I donât really like void shield. Crystal reflection is ok.
I would just rather go the simple route of just making pws stronger baseline for all specs.
All changes and modifiers suggested donât feel like it does much justice. Simple and sweet just make it good to use.
The PoH and Renew sides of Holy arenât really fully fleshed out yet imho. Thereâs still more powerful single target healing talents available and itâs entirely possible single target heal spamming may still be the go to raid healing method for Holy.
Flash Heal/Heal build:
PoH build:
And⊠thatâs it. Renew doesnât scale off of mastery and PoH is still terribly unsupported by deep tree talents.
Not sure, Smite has a lot of synergies here and there on the holy side of things. So it doesnât necessarily make sense to carry over the synergy if it replaces it.
I wouldnât mind being able to have it, but replacing seems a bit anti-synergistic 
Are you implying you want BOTH!!! The audacity!
I like it.
Big brain moment.
What if shadow covenant transformed smite into mind flay for its duration?
Could be interresting in the very least. At least weâd have something to do if everything else is on cd
Would it be strong enough to warrant extending the duration of covenant?
Hard to believe, itâs still a filler spell so damage isnât all that high. Would have to see on live to be sure. That talent still competes with Twilight Corruption, itâs hard to think that youâd want to miss out on another way to make penance stronger for a few seconds of shadow covâŠ
Thatâs better explained than I could have done as I play holy less frequently
Havenât made a lot of research on this one. It feels a bit underwhelming still but I havenât read/watched anything worth the mention on it so far. Have we seen anyone on the beta make use of it yet?
From what I heard is that you get 2 charges each time you cast Flash Heal and itâs only consumed each time you cast Heal.
In your PoH build, you missed 30% increased healing on the most injured target it affects and smart healing through Prayerful Litany.
Flash Heal/Heal build might be very mana intensive due to 1 Heal per 2 Flash Heal, and thereâs no longer any Night Fae to shore up overhealing crits or mastery into shielding. This will change playstyle as youâre no longer incentivized to heal the same target to a full 100% but move on if youâre spot healing.
Shadowmend has no cleave heal, however, and will likely not work into rotation except when interrupted or in PvP.
Renew build picks up several perks
Iâll agree with you that PoH doesnât really have much going for it as it only has conditional boosts dependent on other spell usage, but Renew looks pretty good.
Alternatively, you can drop Divine Word for the Renew Build and pick up Lightweaver as well while retaining those boosts.
On the subject of mana: if they donât adjust the mana costs⊠Holy and Disc are going to be oom super fast this coming expansion because we no longer have Fae Guardians for mana return as you noted. Between BFA and Shadowlands Holy had almost all of its spells base mana cost increased by 0.5% a cast. Shadowfiend will help, but its on a 3 minute cd. The ideal time to blow it would be early in the fight and when Heroism is out.
Renew has potential, but the biggest handicap is still going to be the lack of scaling off of Mastery. Youâd have to stack Versatility, Haste, and Crit to get the most out of it. It also will only work well in RoT heavy encounters. Iâll definitely try it though.
The PoH build will only work on fights where thereâs some AOE raid damage to heal. In-between your PoH casts youâll probably still be spamming single target heals.
Iâm just not seeing the #s though where PoH and Renew are going to outclass the current single target healing playstyle though.
Yeah Mana restore options are looking a lot worse. They added that innervate with 25% reduced cast speed potion, but Iâm unsure how well thatâs going to hold up. Iâve been practicing with raiding as Kyrian to try to prepare, and itâs like you said you have to blow mana pots as soon as you hit 88% on longer fights. And nobody really seems to have noticed Surge of Light ate a 50% nerf, sitting at 4% instead of 8% to account for Disc and Shadow having access (edit: nevermind, just not properly updated on the beta build tree). If individual ticks of Vampiric Embrace can proc surge of light, there might be a possibility of running it.
As for Renew scaling and Mastery, itâs probably why they added that Prismatic Echoes talent. Just getting to 30% mastery will make the talent boost that to 40%, so you can focus on other stats. Iâm still likely going to stick with verse over crit, but will definitely look into seeing how haste scales. Even now in Shadowlands, although not boosted with DF talents, PoM/CoH/Renew feel really good and almost spammable with enough Haste.
I donât have much interest in PoH, but I do think itâs one of the few builds that might want HW: Life simply due to mana constraints and less available HW: Serenity. PoH can still use Renew as filler.
If single target healing hpriest cannot keep enough mana for long fights, it will either peel back to priority tank/soak healing or default to raid healing and another heal spec will step in for single target. Likely Paladins.
I still think the biggest loss is the 4pc set bonus for Holy Priests. Being able to choose to boost mending, renew, CoH, or flash with more healing still added more to the playstyle and efficiency.
I donât know if this is actually true.
In raid Disc already goes OOM without innervates so itâs familiar territory for them. 
Disc actually came out mana positive because they got mindbender + Solace now, versus one or the other along with mindgames.
Holy lost a chunk of mana return with the removal of bender and that mana return ripple talent - but youâve got Shadowfiend now, at least, and that will make up like 20-30% mana per fight. I think if you guys take Mindgames, Enlightenment and have your Shadowfiend, youâre making back a decent chunk.
Say itâs a 5 minute fight. You cast Mindgames 6 times that fight, thatâs 12% mana gained. Shadowfiend generally hits ~10-15 times, but weâre at lower haste, so letâs estimate 10 and thatâs 10% more mana, then youâve got enlightenment ticking. Thatâs not DIRE, and if the fight goes to 6 minutes, youâve got 7 casts of mindgames (14%) and 2 casts of Sfiend (20%) so 34% mana back, etc.
Itâs not Fae Guardians mana, but IDK it doesnât seem that bad, especially with symbol of hope.
It wouldâve been nice to see Mind Restrain go live for Dragonflight. That was a nice mitigating passive it seemed in Alpha. Kinda bummed about shadow mend CD.
This is a post from Shoy on the EU forums about Shadow Priest, copying it here for visibility.
Often times instead of picking between two different goals, in my head it would feel better to choose between two different ways to achieve a similar goal.
A nice example is in the Single/Multi target goal choice of Shadow Crash vs. Void Torrent.
Consider the following choice draft:
Being a âcapstoneâ ability in the class tree, it feels off for Mindgames to offer damage. This offers itself as a utility-only ability due to its position in the tree and 0 spec interactions.
Consider this draft:
Mindgames enhances Mind Blast and adds a âmini Mindgamesâ effect to each cast, similar to what Condemn did for Execute. Yummy.
Mind Spike DoT removal is a by-gone mechanic that seems to contradict what the rest of the tree is trying to empower.
Random thought:
Instead of the negativity of DoT removal, introduce a situational benefit. Make Mind Spike remove a few secs of DoTs and deal the damage instantly (similar to Painbreaker). Surge procs could ofc negate DoT removal.
This would flow nicely with day-to-day grinding and leveling routines.
Second random thought, so that it makes sense in cooldowns:
During Dark Ascension and Voidform, the dot consummation could be reversed and instead extend DoTs.
There are similar issues with Dark Ascension, which is a strict downgrade to current Voidform. I really do not get where all the hype on forums and discord is coming from 
:
This cooldown is strictly contradictory and my mind just cannot comprehend its motivations. If you guys want this, then go play a gosh darned frost mage.
Compared to Dark Ascension, Voidform creates a plethora of positive interactions:
The current notion is to remove Voidform. I scoured many forums and discord posts for reasons.
Why?
Upon removal, what are the alternatives? Unless you come up with a worthy replacement of this core gameplay part, all I see are strict downgrades.
All in all, Voidform is not without its quirks. My personal list of improvements:
Every time I see a Shadow player look at the new talents, they view anything that generates extra Insanity (or makes you spend less) as not worth even thinking about. There is a huge stigma associated with Insanity abundance and later overflow since mid Castle Nathria.
From what I remember:
Fellow Shadow Priests, please note that leaving Shadowlands, we lose many effects, that I see as the culprit:
This barebones state will in my humble guesstimate result in Insanity drought (talking 30% haste) unless remedied by talents like Lunacy. (No beta access, cannot feel for myself)
Where I agree with the community is that spenders feel weak
yeah youre right body and soul should no longer be a talent for us with the current design of pws or it should be xfered onto renew. i thought it would be cool if we used holy spells to apply atonement and use shadow spells to deal a majority of damage.
i mean yes and no currently Disc applies atonement through PW:S, renew, flash heal, thats a good portion of holy skills already im not saying âmake every holy skill an atonement applicatorâ just a few radiance is pretty close to CoH on how it works.
just make smite and pen into something shadow themed its basically done. LW being a capstone should count as both holy and shadow damage. and thats a pretty solid spec fantasy.
you can disagree but youâre still incorrect, its been close to 4 expansions since disc changed from a barrier healer to its current iteration. sure they brought back spirit shell this expansion and promptly killed it after S1 but to say its class fantasy is mitigation is completely incorrect