(BETA) Dragonflight Priest Talent Tree Feedback Thread

Classes Priest
536

Well no, that’s unlikely. It’s a possibility, but I’m simply talking about their current cosmology.

We know the void lords are heavily aligned with the cosmic force of shadow and are part of the void and can’t pierce the veil, so they created/cast the old gods into the universe.

It’s speculative but the naaru seem to be the same thing but for the cosmic power of light. We see that in the altercation between X’era and Illidan, we also see it taken to a much wider level with alternate Draenor in the mag’har recruitment quest. It’s why people kind of expected this expansion to be very light themed coming out of shadowlands with Turalyon in charge of the alliance.

It also seems to be setting Anduin up for some kind of internal struggle later, too. He’s a disc priest for a reason, and he’s currently struggling with shadow/light - most likely in a very predictable fashion to come to the conclusion that the light isn’t an all-encompassing ‘good’ force that he thought it was.

537

Then we agree.
We have lore that supports the Naaru go into a life/death cycle where life is holy and death is shadow.

Seen in BC
Seen in WoD
Seen in Legion

3 Likes
538

Warlock seems to do shadow just fine without old god influence. Psychic wasn’t really linked to old gods until the void stuff started creeping in, it was just shadow/psychic magic.

How does Holy or Disc ever justify having void themes? It genuinely feels like an entirely different class to me. The class tree is supposed to represent our entire class as a unit, not 3 separate specs with no real cross over.

Shadows Tree is certainly a design issue more than theme issue, but the class tree feels like it’s suffering from a lack of cohesion, and I think a lot of that stems from the fact that shadow doesn’t have a theme that meshes with the rest of the class, and if it went away from being “void/old god” and went back to being just “shadow/psychic” magic it would feel a lot more appropriate.

3 Likes
539

Yeah I think you’re sorta wrong in your analysis that this is just natural for them to do.

Locus walker straight up tells us that the only times he’s ever seen a naaru fall to the void it happened as a result of mortals getting involved. Blizzard also clarified that a naaru falling to the void-state is an exceedingly rare thing to have happen, and the naaru see it as a horribly bad thing whenever it does happen. It seems to be anything but natural.

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540

Natural or forced, still doesn’t change the fact that they have the ability to go back and forth.

Meaning they are not Void Lords / Old Gods yet still have deep ties to Shadow.

Even the shadow parts of the cult of forgotten shadow say to not dwell to deep in shadow for you can loose yourself.

541

That’s because the legion has been powered-up by the Nathrezim since long before we’ve had our warlocks. Shadow magic isn’t exclusive to the void. You can see a fare share of it in the Shadowlands and in the legion and more.

If you look at priests other than human priest who seems to venerate the light, most other priests in game are praying to a god. Trolls have their wild god, NE god Elune (which isn’t only a light themed god) etc. If you get priests, like human, who refers to the light itself, then the opposite of that isn’t shadow, but the Void.

Just my 2 cents… It doesn’t make sense for shadow to be a mess because of it’s void component… It’s a design flaw, simple as that.

542

That’s kind of my point though.

I feel like this, again, just makes the point that void isn’t necessary for shadow to be shadow. There’s a whole world of possibilities of power that the shadow side of priest could draw from, but it doesn’t make thematic sense with holy or disc to draw from void.

Not just about shadow, this is about the priest class as a whole. Shadow on it’s own is fine with the void theme, though I don’t particularly enjoy it as much. Shadow when placed next to holy and Disc (Especially disc, who already has a very strong thematic light/dark combination) just looks like it is another class that shares the same name. There’s nothing in the rest of our class to even imply that we are old god channeling maniacs.

And I personally believe that is a problem for our class tree design.

2 Likes
543

Well, I mean… Voidwalker.

Also psychic was connected to the old gods as early as vanilla, just loosely. And shadow magic itself was 100% connected to the void as we learned about the void lords, who we learned were themselves composed entirely of shadow energy.

The makings of void being connected to shadow was far earlier than just legion.

I mean disc absolutely justifies it just by casting a bunch of shadow magic. If void tentacles and stuff started getting introduced to stuff like Shadow covenant, etc. I wouldn’t think it was horribly off theme or anything. As far as why Holy’s still casting shadow magic post-these connections being made, I mean I think that’s just because people wouldn’t like if they lost the spells they have, lol.

Yes, but it does change the message entirely.

Agreed. But this doesn’t mean that it’s some natural state of being for Naaru. It can happen, that’s shown, I suppose. But there’s a big difference between being corrupted by something, and having that be a natural state you sometimes enter into. For your argument about naaru theming to be accurate, it would have to be the second.

It’s like… I can drink a lot and become an alcoholic. It does not mean that I am an alcoholic by nature. It is also not evidence that all humans are destined alcoholics.

I also think changing void eruption to ‘shadow eruption’ does nothing to change the class, in reality. That’s what I’m saying. The problem isn’t the theming, but the actual mechanics at play. Similarly, we can bring back the entire MoP playstyle if we wanted and rename Shadow Orbs to Void Orbs and vampiric touch to void corruption. We’d still have a void theme, but be playing very different.

2 Likes
544

Like I said, there are different kinds of priests. It’s fair to say that the 3 specs wouldn’t “draw” their powers from the same sources.

A pure shadow priest is definetely drawing its power from the void while a holy priest from the light. (Either that or an entity that is dedicated mostly to those). While disc is probably drawing either from multiple sources (to a lesser extend) or an entity that incarns/draw from both sources of power.

Wow has always been this game where they let enough space for players to fill up the remaining information…

545

It’s not that they are corrupted, it’s that there energies were drained… they were dying.

Dark naaru

Naaru can die, but if their physical form is damaged, it may bleed their energy causing them to enter a darkened state[51] in which they are weakened and produce void energies,[52]becoming dark naaru [53][13] (Dark Naaru)[54] or darkened naaru.[55] A naaru’s darkened state is different than death. Their energy may take up to one thousand years to regenerate.[56] It should be noted that some darkened naaru still appear to harbor altruistic intentions

546

Voidwalkers are beings of chaotic energy summoned from the twisting nether. Not from the void.

I disagree, psychic was just psychic. I don’t recall me or anybody else I played with being like “damn psychic void magic always messing with people’s minds”.

It wasn’t until blizzard started getting in this weird cosmological scale and did an entire redesign with a focus on “void” and “insanity” that it truly became one in the same for shadow priests.

Disc has existed with spells like power of the dark side, shadow mend, dark arch, shadow covenant, schism, for a while now and they have never been old god/void themed. Them summoning tentacles and the like would most certainly be off theme, because that’s never been a core theme of the priest class as a whole.

Holy casts shadow magic because not all shadow magic is void magic, the shadow priest specific version is void magic, and that’s an issue.

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547

We’ve been using mindbender for a while though. That’s old-god themed for sure. Even the shadowfiend is old-god like…

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548

Which is a problem when your class is supposed to compliment itself and feel like one unit with unique specializations.

So this is no different, let shadow just be shadow, connect it to our other specs, and let players fill in the rest.

He’s just a dude made of shadows, he isn’t like some summoned thing from the beyond. The base spell literally reads “create a shadowy fiend”. I don’t think mindbender is really core enough to warrant much discussion about him. He’s a talent, talents do weird things sometimes.

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549

Dark or Light?

Some players have expressed suspicion of the perceived perfection and altruism of the naaru. Some believe that the naaru have ulterior motives, or there is an undiscovered faction of “dark” naaru.

As D’ore himself says,

“It is a facet of the naaru condition - without the void, the Light cannot exist.”

This could be taken to mean that if these naaru are pure light and good, then there must be a polar opposite - that is, naaru or another race who are as much darkness and evil as the ones we have encountered so far are good and pure. After many years, in World of Warcraft: Chronicle, such a race was revealed to have been known to us all along: the Old Gods were actually creatures of the Void, and the twilight magic they wielded was the polar opposite to the Light. Chronicle have also revealed the dualistic nature of the Void and Light: the universe was created through the conflict of these two forces, and indeed they are defined by their opposition to each other.

Old gods are creatures of the void, but the void is the primary source. The old gods just utilize it. Meaning many factions can use shadow/void without being related to old gods.

550

sounds like you don’t really have arguments there… Mindbender IS core to disc and is a frequently picked talent…

551

Mindbender is a strong talent and the talents competing with it aren’t good enough to warrant taking. This has nothing to do with mindbender making sense or not thematically. If you replaced mindbender with “tiny tree spirit” disc would still take it. If you don’t pick mind bender, you are back to base shadow friend who is just a little guy made of shadows.

A talent is literally not a core part of a class.

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552

OK, sure, but this isn’t evidence of what you’ve posted in the comment you linked me? Maybe I misunderstood what you are getting at.

They are weakened. Meaning their light was drawn out of them, and needed to recoup. Even just the final sentence there: “It should be noted that some darkened naaru still appear to harbor altruistic intentions”

Where they truly do become part of the void is laid out even further in that article:

“Thrice, darkened naaru have also been shown to transform further into void gods; though in all known occasions this was only when their light was forcibly drained by an outside party, so it does not seem to be a natural phenomenon and is normally extremely rare”

I assumed this is what you were talking about. So no, they do not ‘swap to dark’ when they become darkened. It means their light is fading. Think a light bulb that’s slowly fading out. With time they can recover. If they’re forcibly drained of ALL light, (and possibly even further beyond, it’s unclear), then they might become a void god and yes. But that’s not a natural process for them as far as we can tell. After all, naaru DO die. It’s not like they all fade away and become dark when they die, at all.

The fact they can turn into void lords once all their light is drained is, in fact, more evidence that Void gods/lords are specifically a result of 100% lack of light, or that they are some kind of darkness incarnate.

Also this doesn’t actually matter in the end, because the underlying problem isn’t one of theming and never will be.

This isn’t actually relevant, though.

I’m saying the seeds were planted, and they were. What type of magic did C’thun use in the raid fight? What spell were his tentacles casting? What kind of magic did the Yogg-Saron fight feature?

It seemed to be a clear theme with old gods that shadow magic was absolutely something they were using, and they had theming pretty closely aligned with Shadow’s current spell list, too.

But all void magic IS shadow magic, and it makes total sense for a priest to dabble in it. That’s what I’m saying.

553

You brought it up.

554

Feels like you’re trying to play which came first, the old gods or the shadow magic being a void thing.

It’s relevant because there wasn’t (and still isn’t) a clear answer to what any real magic in the warcraft universe is. It’s all magic, there’s multiple types and uses of just about every school of magic in the game.

Not all shadow magic is void magic, and it doesn’t make sense for many priests to be using void magic, where it would make sense for them to use “shadow” magic.

1 Like
555

Yes, I brought it up in replying to someone whether it made sense for Shadow to have a void theme.

But I don’t attribute ANY of shadow’s current problems to theming, and I’m disagreeing with the notion that it’s core to the spec’s problems.

Shadow would have all of the same problems even if Blizzard today re-themed void eruption to ‘shadow magic’ (which, by the way, void magic is still shadow magic) and renamed insanity to something like ‘shadow power’. That alone is evidence that the problem isn’t the theme so much as the mechanics behind current insanity gen.

When it comes to the class tree overall and not having much choice for shadow there, again, that has more to do with what Disc and Holy offer more than anything else. Disc could be pulling out modern body armor and tossing it to other players for its shielding and just straight up taking out a pistol shooting people for penance. It still wouldn’t make shadow want anything Disc offered playstyle-wise. What would Shadow even want out of Disc’s toolkit. Penance? Is another ‘just hit this button on CD’ a good idea to put in the shadow spec for its gameplay? I guess they might want pain supp or barrier - but that’s so deeply a discipline class feature that there’s no way it would be smart to give to Holy from a gameplay perspective - for a similar reason it wouldn’t be smart to shove hymn onto Disc, right?

That’s the problem with Shadow.

No, I think that’s what you’re doing by saying ‘shadow’ is a theme and void clearly had nothing to do with it. If you’re not playing a which came first game, here, then it doesn’t matter, because in the absolute CURRENT cosmology, shadow and void are intrinsically linked. I’m just saying that getting to this point wasn’t out of left field - everything was there that this kind of move mmade sense.

And I flat out disagree, lol.