(BETA) Dragonflight Priest Talent Tree Feedback Thread

Classes Priest
374

Post-alpha feedback:

Discipline

  • Moving Penance and all of its modifiers to the right, but leaving Harsh Discipline/Evenfall on the left is very strange.
  • Shining Radiance is terrible and needs buffed if we’re expected to take it. This would be an OK change if Shining Radiance was anywhere near as good as the conduit is. Imp Radiance seems like it was only moved over to where it is because people were skipping Shining Radiance. And Imp. Radiance is too integral to the spec overall to not take.
  • Wicked star probably needed its silence taken away considering how bonkers it would be, and the new effect is still very good for M+, so this change is OK IMO.
  • Dark Indulgence isn’t very good at 10%. It went from a decent talent to something you’re not going to take in favor of Scov or Schism. It also got moved off to the side, so it really is a dead talent.

Holy

  • Is this even a talent tree? If talent trees are about choice, why do you have to take pretty much every single talent in the tree before you can hit tier 3? Like, there’s only 3 flex points in the first 2 tiers that you possibly can have. This one just feels bad from that perspective.
6 Likes
375

Surge of Light needs to not section off an entire section of the tree. Its a terrible talent that throws off the entire flow of battle. It might be good if Flash Heal is being cast once in a while, but if Flash Heal spam is needed, it throws the priest through a loop.

EDIT: If anyone disagrees, please let me know how to handle that blasted talent. I am open to learning. Thank you.

376

They got ride of the inner will variant? am i seeing that right. Very sad

377

Surge of light is an excellent talent for reserving mana. The flash of light casts it grants are totally free and instant, and flash lowers serenity’s cooldown so it’s a straight up efficiency increase no matter how you look at it.

2 Likes
378

Perhaps it is. But how do you handle the battleflow? I know exactly when to press the button again when I need to Flash Heal spam, and having it cast early throws off the rhythm, and it takes a few seconds to get back in the flow, during which people could die, AND I could get another proc in the meantime; its a headache.

Maybe its not a problem in raids, but in 5mans when I’m the only healer, it certainly is. I certainly want to avoid having those procs happen.

1 Like
379

I guess… Why are you flash heal spamming? Even in 5 mans this isn’t exactly common.

I also don’t really know what you mean by it takes a few seconds to get back into the flow? It’s just an instant cast flash heal. Flash heal only takes one global to cast, and after an instant flash heal you’d have to wait a single global to start casting again. So the amount of time you spend waiting after the cast is the same as you’d have to spend casting - there’s no lost time here.

The talent is only a benefit - I really don’t understand what you’re getting at, I guess.

2 Likes
380

There’s confusion at first. The proc goes by unnoticed at that speed, and then the button doesn’t work when it should, then you kinda have to reset your thinking to the new flow.

Its pretty common with newer tanks and/or dpss.

381

If Shining Radiance is going to remain a talent, it absolutely needs to swap places with Improved Power Word: Radiance. It feels so bad having to drop two talents into a weak throughput choice just to get one more radiance charge.

1 Like
382

I think its like contrition. They want to force you to take it and i agree with you. Im not a fan of the new tree. I prefered the last one. We all saw the wikid star nerf coming tho haha. Didnt last long

1 Like
383

You should see the Preservation tree - every node is powerful. Unlike ours.

1 Like
384

Also, I’m thrilled to see that there are zero disc or holy posts on the Official DF Alpha Priest Feedback Thread.

This is what happens when you give out Alpha to players who don’t care about priest and just hand it out to streamers and elitists.

If you give out alpha to elitists and streamers, you’re going to get a very narrow / skewed set of feedback.

1 Like
385

Surge of Light is a passive HPM increase and is one of the few heals Holy can use while being mobile. The best use out of it is to combo heal people with it a Heal followed by an instant Surge of Light. With the flash concentration playstyle it’s pretty useful for keeping the proc up.

The way it’s looking on the alpha tree is that as long as you keep renew up you can get a 20% proc chance on SoL which is quite a lot considering Benediction can be taken as a talent.

Either way: with the launch of the Alpha there wasn’t any noted changes to the Holy Priest abilities that I saw when comparing.

Heal, Flash Heal, Prayer of Healing, etc. all do the same healing, mana cost, etc. TLDR is that things aren’t looking good… no Flash Concentration replacement or buff to PoH = massive Holy Priest nerf incoming.

Just comparing the damage stuff… assuming a loss of 1 minute Boon of Ascension… the new Holy Priest talents just barely make up for the 2k passive damage lost.

The +50% improved smite damage will about be an extra 100 dps increase on-top of the extra 20-25 dps from Searing Light. The -40% cd reduction on Holy Fire will be about an extra 150 dps increase. It’ll be a 6s reset instead of 10s.

Now the question comes down to how Divine Word works. You get increased damage (not stated how much) and Smite has a chance to apply Holy Fire for 15s. Let’s just be “generous” and say its about a 200 dps upgrade.

Empyreal Blaze is basically 3 extra Holy Fires every 30s. That is 7-8 casts of Holy Fire instead of 5 every 30s. Looking at about a 300-400 dps increase.

Then you get the +20% damage increase when you hit or heal targets below 35% hp. This will be pretty variable, but maintaining a high uptime will increase your damage a lot. Can be anywhere from a 200-500 dps increase.

Now the question is how much will Mind Blast do for Holy. You’ll be able to talent it down to a 7.5s reset and it probably won’t be that much more damage than Smite, especially with all the talents boosting it up.

DPS wise Holy is probably going to have a really packed healer dps rotation to manage. Holy Fire will be a 6s reset on-top of Mind Blast 7.5s cd and Divine Star 15s cd. You’ll just barely be able to squeeze some smites inbetween having to SWP stuff.

Then you have multiple damage cds to press at once… Divine Word, Empyreal Blaze, and Mindbender to do Shadowflame Prism with Mind Blast casts. This is on-top of getting Power Infusion from Twin Suns.

I have no clue if Divine Word and Empyreal Blaze are off the GCD…

386

Unwavering will in dungeon and Gales of Song in raid do make up for this quite a bit. I agree that it’s a bit concerning, but also renewed faith is a bigger increase than people think it is. Add in the fact your typical dungeon build will have LoTN + Apotheosis + Holy Oration now, and I honestly don’t think Holy will have real problems keeping people alive.

And we’ll have to see how divine word works out - that one could be great or terrible, hard to say.

If they did make up for it, Holy would still be sitting in a good spot. Most classes are not doing anywhere near Holy right now without their own covenant abilities that they (so far) are also losing. Empyreal Blaze actually sounds pretty good for DPS - and it’s flexible to single target - since it should allow permanent uptime on Holy Fire if you utilize Divine words.

I absolutely agree that there’s a lot of buttons to hit right now for Holy though.

387

Just chiming in agreement here:

And not just talents individually, but talent combinations as well. Renewed Faith and Twist of Faith can now be combined, for example, for 30% increased healing. Nothing to sneeze at! (fo sho)

And on big pulls where both damage and healing are in high demand, Holy will be able to share the Power Infusions it gives away.

And so forth.

I’m sure Holy will be fine.

388

Shadow’s talent tree is in a very scary spot. We’re overloaded on nodes, we can’t even realistically talent our defensive or utility spells because we need to use those points to even reach the bottom nodes in the tree.

Speaking of the bottom nodes in the tree, many of them are less than a 1% throughput bonus, which not only feels bad - it is absolutely unacceptable.

Shadow’s. Tree. Is. Terrible. I refuse to have anything positive to say about it until I’m given a reason to - it needs iteration, the spec needs to hear from the dev, whoever they are, because right now we’ve gotten complete radio silence and that is absolutely terrible and very concerning. I just want to play my main AND ENJOY IT…

1 Like
389

Please make the shadow dps abilities spec baseline like hunters, especially if there is concern about healing priests having too much access.

Having to talent currently baseline abilities (Vampiric Touch, Devouring Touch, Mind Sear, etc), doesn’t feel good at all. Was so looking forward to seeing new and/or reworked talents in those slots instead.

Finally, Dispersion and Vampiric Embrace have been iconic priest abilities and as such should be baseline. It will free up room for those new awesome abilities you’ve been wanting to put into the game!

tl&dr: Please prune the tree of required abilities and make them class or spec baseline.

2 Likes
390

Would ABSOLUTELY LOVE to hear design goals, feedback, etc. from the dev working on this spec even if it’s via a community manager. There has been too much radio silence.

4 Likes
391

When you compare Shadows tree and it’s core DPS abilities being talents with something like hunters as you mention, it does seem odd.

However, when you compare those same core DPS talents with our past talent trees (look at wrath) it makes sense why they are talents and not baseline.

If they are baseline, they should be accessible to the other specs in the class. However, abilities like VT and DP are now very iconic and very Shadow spec focused that it would seem out of place for Holy and Disc only because Shadow is a very unique brother of its other class specs.

Where as Hunter, rogue and DK share a vast amount of similar abilities thus making it very logical to put those shared abilities in the class tree or make them baseline.

There are exceptions like Shadowform is Shadow only baseline but to me at least, I was expecting even that to be a talent in shadows tree just like it was in the past (wrath again for ref.) another exception (again I don’t agree) is having Purify being baseline to Holy and Disc but not for shadow.

So it’s a difficult path to navigate and be consistent with all the classes in the approach of how they handle what abilities are to be baseline vs class talent vs spec specific.

But honestly, I don’t think that’s the issue at hand, that’s just a surface level symptom of the greater problem plaguing the Shadow spec as a whole and by extension, the class talent tree as well and that is what I am calling the Identity crisis in that it’s very clear that Blizzard are caught between a rock and a hard place in that the more they make shadow unique, the more disconnected it is from Holy and Disc which results is lackluster class talent options to pick from because there are clear paths and choices that don’t have any effect on your spec if you chose to take it or not. This is not the same thing we see with any other talents released so far (maybe survival Hunter in the class tree).

What blizzard need to focus on is making a clear and cohesive play style or play styles options in shadows tree and the rest of the problems and issues will fade away imo.

1 Like
392

My mistake. It’s actually rogues that have both baseline class abilities and baseline spec abilities.

My suggestion is current Shadow damage abilities be made baseline SPEC abilities (like each of the three rogue specs) and more interesting/meaningful talents added.

393

I understand why you are asking for this.

But I have to add that I think Blizzard is trying to return to a more “class” centric style by taking a step back from a more “spec” centric style that I would say was shifted into heavy spec centric style in the Legion Revamp… which also coincides the Voidform revamp and the change in Disc to focus around the Atonement system.

Point is, since the Legion changes… all 3 specs of priest have widely different abilities and ways to play which offer very little in terms of “shared abilities / buttons” that we did have prior to that change.

This is why I am calling the entire overarching issue a “Class Identity Crisis” as we are the only class that has this level of extreme conflict within its respective specializations.

Now I am not familiar enough with the rogue, but if they are getting baseline abilities that were initially talent abilities from years past, then its the rogue that should be adjusted and not the Priest “IF” Blizzard is trying to return to a more class centric style and moving forward (Which with the introduction of the class tree seems that is the intent).

Basically… we are boned imo unless we see major changes. Giving Mind Flay, VT, DP, Mind Sear and maybe Dispersion, Vamp Embrace and Silence baseline to Shadow only imo will still not fix the issues plaguing the spec. Those are just the symptom of how different we are to the other specs. What needs to happen is we need to recognize that very crucial fact and design the Shadows playstyle(s) and tree with that in mind. Meaning if we had a clear and meaningful choices and were not blocked by bad talent placements and pathways and point requirements, then the issues you are stating will no longer be a problem. They are surface issues only. The real problem goes well beyond that.

Edit:

Example of how horrible the class identity is right now…

  • Holy / Shadow conflict
    • Shadow basically doesn’t use Holy spells
  • Holy / Discipline conflict
    • Holy Doesn’t use Absorbs (not really at least) from Power Word: Shield
  • Discipline / Shadow conflict
    • Discipline uses shadow, but they cant be buffed to much without making Shadows version overpowered.
    • Shadow uses shields, but the class tree cant buff them that much or else it makes Discipline overpowered

And overall, each spec uses its own suite of abilities that the other doesn’t use except…

Basically the only common / shared abilities we have and can use are basic Shadow abilities…

  • Shadow Word: Pain
  • Mind Blast
  • Shadow Word: Death
  • Shadow Fiend
  • Psychic Scream
  • Fade
  • Mind Control

Only 3 of those are rotational damage abilities and 2 of which are baseline for all 3 specs.

But an ability we had in the past “Mind Spike” could be a baseline or class talent which can then be uses with talents like…

  • Mind Spike
    1.5sec cast
    Blasts the target for 1 Shadowfrost damage, but extinguishes your Shadow damage-over-time effects from the target in the process.
    Mind Spike also increases the critical strike chance of your next Mind Blast on the target by 30%. Stacks up to 3 times.

  • Paralysis
    When you critically hit with your Mind Blast, you cause the target to be unable to move for 2/4 sec.

Both of those can be talents in the Class tree and be useful for Disc and Holy. But open up a new direction for shadow as well in the shadow tree.

Talent like…

  • Surge of Darkness
    Your Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague damage has a 12% chance to cause your next Mind Spike not to consume your damage over time effects, be instant, and deal 50% additional damage. Can accumulate up to 3 charges.

But abilities that relay on a resource system like “Insanity” or the “old god / Void lord theme” just doesn’t work for Holy or Discipline. Thus creating the divide on the Shadow spec side.

We need to bridge the spec together with similar abilities and themes. My idea is to replace Power Infusion to instead get the Archangel wings back from Cata…

(Modified to work for all 3 specs)

  • Archangel
    Instant
    Archangel - Instantly restores 5% of your total mana and increases your healing done by 15%. Lasts for 18sec. 60 sec cooldown.

OR (Choice)

  • Dark Archangel
    Instant
    Dark Archangel - Increase haste by 5% and increases your damage done by 20%. Lasts for 18sec. 90 sec cooldown.

It’s just an idea, but at its core, we need more common spells opened up to all 3 specs…
The fact that Halo, Divine Star & Cascade (well Cascade got removed after WoD… again another redesign issue causing this mess) cant be used by shadow in a shadow version just highlights the spec divide even further.

I think that’s enough to illustrate my point in how much of a total cluster of a mess the class and its specs are currently going into this world of “class trees” as it really doesn’t work for Priest. What we have for the Class tree for priest is 3 columns / sections of spells that cater to each specific spec by which causes no reason for any of the specs to dip into the other. Only Discipline can kind of get away with this since it can do both Holy and Shadow type of abilities as part of its design and intent.

Oh and here is an idea that basically words for all 3 specs in that each spec uses “word” spells…

Holy = Holy Word
Discipline = Power Word
Shadow = Shadow Word

So here is something that can work as a class tree talent… but this is new, meaning we need to add new cross over talents that work with each spec.

  • Mindful Words
    Within 5 seconds after casting Mind Blast, your next Word spell effect is increased by 20%.
1 Like