(BETA) Dragonflight Priest Talent Tree Feedback Thread

Classes Priest
576

Well you seem to think holy and disc should really like the current tree, but even the things that are attractive to them aren’t really very interesting. Mindbender isn’t like some cool utility or anything like that.

Is it though? How many mind blasts and SW:D are you going to be casting?

A ton of passive mana regen doesn’t belong on the class tree, nobody should be excited about losing points to something you will be balanced around taking. And by your own logic, you’re just speccing back into feathers which you already had, which is bad, so no excitement there.

Now, let’s look at the shaman tree, you have

  • Multiple of damage/cc mitigation
  • multiple different movement options
    -many CC utility options
    -many party utility options (mana, healing stream, poison cleanse)
    -a bunch of talents that allow you to augment almost every single earlier point in different ways such as cooldown, strength of ability, ability resets

You have the flexibility and freedom to take these things in ways that you couldn’t before, you can build trees that are designed for the content you’re participating in. If you don’t need certain utility you don’t have to take it and you can pick up something else. What are you skipping the utility for? Other utility? There’s not that much throughput in the tree, you’re going to have spare points and you aren’t going to want every ability for every scenario.

Yeah, because the “void” thing is a weird offshoot of what shadow should actually be, Holy/Disc would be very interested in a lot of things like disperse or silence, and those would still fit with the rest of the class because they are shadow themed.

The reason theme is so important is because you have to ask “what makes shadow, shadow?” and that’s how you mesh the specs together to make an interesting class. If your answer is “void form, void bolt, void eruption” just like you said, blizzard isn’t going to give those over, and it doesn’t make sense.

Why is shadow a part of the priest class? What can it offer to the other specs and what, in turn, can those specs offer to shadow. Right now our tree is just 2 very obvious spec trees slapped together, there has to be a fundamental understanding of what a priest is supposed to do before that can change.

2 Likes
577

Feels like you are overestimating this forum. This place has been a s%&# show about the smallest detail since forever

578

Oh I know, been here since 2004.

And since that time, during MoP and WoD, shadow spec design and how it played was not really a concern.

In vanilla, we had mana and threat issues mainly.
In BC, I think we were pretty decent, I can’t recall much as real life distracted me.
Wrath, once again pretty decent.
Cata, we had the issue of generating orbs from RNG didn’t feel good all expansion… until 4 set Dragon Soul getting Shadowfiend to grant 3 orbs per hit which made our burst so intense lol.
MoP, AOE strong, single target bad.
WoD, lack of content… class design was good across the board. Loved Paladin, Warrior (fury as MoP arms was best), Druid, DK, Hunter and of course Shadow Priest. Rest of the classes I didn’t play so I can’t say.

Then legion hit and every class got changes. Some good and some not so good and we been feeling those after effects ever since.

The fact that Voidform became a thing and just kept Shadowform in a watered down state makes no mechanical sense… meaning they wanted to push a theme and had to radically change the spec in order to deceiver on that theme which IMO blew up in there face as the Designer of shadow new void old god theme left or got fired or something shortly after that. So they were just left with a pile of crap and had to make due for years.

2 Likes
579

As a disc priest main i do like the trees yes. Ive enjoyed thinking how i will play the various set ups i can make.

2 mb and 2 swd while mind bender is up in keys. If disc lacks mind sear then yes some aoe damage will help plus those 4 spells will allow mind bender to go for 4 more seconds, so more damage again.

Since disc came into being in legion in its current format, mana has been highly valued. Im loving the mana options in the trees. For once maybe i can watch mana less and heal more

580

I mean it doesn’t have to be - also priest doesn’t have a lot of ‘cool utility’ as a class overall.

SW:D and MB cooldown is in the tree now. So a lot!

Why not? It’s a traditional weakness healer priests have. Disc moreso, but holy isn’t beyond mana problems - and were getting carried through SL with fae guardians.

Yes, which is exactly what shaman is doing all over their tree when it comes to utility. Most of those utility talents are things that were in the base toolkit till you’re at the very bottom in T3.

That they had before barring one. Priest is in the same boat with Masochism/Translucent. You might consider them worse, but it’s still there.

That they had before. Priest hasn’t traditionally had movement aside feather/lifegrip, which are there.

… that they had before.

I think what I said was lost, here?

If you want to make the case shaman is a better class now, so they should invent a bunch of new priest utility, sure.

This isn’t exclusive to them. Priest healers can do this too. I know holy priests that are going to go for SFP and ignore the left side barring renew, etc. especially post-unwavering will nerf.

I know as a Disc priest I’m planning on doing 3 different builds in that tree to try em out.

And if your case is, ‘well those builds might be bad’ that’s also true of shaman. If we’re being realistic here there’s going to be one path for both specs in each type of content they do.

???

It wouldn’t matter if void form, void bolt and void eruption were renamed and given a new visual to become Darker shadowform, shadow bolt and shadow eruption. They still wouldn’t move it over because the problem is just tossing a DPS spec’s DPS cooldown into the class tree. No other class does that, and they shouldn’t.

It’s not because of their void theme. I don’t know what’s not making sense there.

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581

So much this. I want to have a caster spec that isn’t centered about the burst during cooldowns theme.

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582

The problem is it gets kicked out of any raid with a challenging fight that requires a burst phase… Which is a surprisingly high amount of raid fights since… even like wod.

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583

I agree. Blizzard would have to change encounter design a bit. Which shouldn’t be that hard. Have some burst required encounters and some encounters where multi-dotting is favorable.

584

Shadow could still burst in its own way.

Yes it was not condensed in a dedicated timer button, but you got to empower your Mind Flay for 2x damage more often when you could either snipe low health targets with SW:D and take advantage of keeping twists of fate going… even better when you are allowed to proc twists of fate from healing.

But also, there are more ways to play the game then raid fights where you need on demand burst. With the new talent system, they can easily make 1 play style consistent DPS for 5 mans and PvP and other play style baked in a DPS cooldown for more raid focused fights.

The rest of the game should not feel like crap if your spec can only perform well in a single type of content.

1 Like
585

Dishonest to imply that there are various set ups, frankly. There will be one or two decent ones and then a bunch of irrelevant set ups that don’t change anything if the trees stay the way they are.

Hope you don’t have to heal during any of that, because I don’t believe SFP procs atonement currently.

Or, blizzard could just make disc mana regen balanced? This type of node is the kind of thing blizzard has to balance around otherwise if you take it, you just become too strong. You’re not getting “more mana” with this, you’re getting exactly what you’re supposed to with it, and less than you are balanced around having without it.

My guy is over here legitimately arguing that talents shouldn’t be interesting. Lord help us.

As I’ve said before, you have to be balanced around taking this talent, otherwise you just end up being too strong with it. Mana regen should just be baked into the spec and tuned properly.

This is a Good Thing

I’m just lumping all this together because it’s all the same answer.

There’s new combinations and new options for every single spec. Things like lightning lasso, earth grab, spirit walk, gust of wind, mana spring, poison cleansing totem, the astral bulwark improvements, spiritwalker’s grace improvement, stoneskin.

There are combinations that simply were not possible before, and you’re blatantly ignoring those by looking at every single point in the vacuum of “did it exist before”

There’s a difference between a build that takes weird utility and a build that’s just bad. You cannot really make a “bad” build with the shaman tree. Sure there might be some stuff you aren’t going to use, but you’d be hard pressed to avoid grabbing anything useful at all, and many of the options are things that you could just make work depending on your playstyle. You’d have to really go out of your way to find a place where you feel bad putting points into.

The priest tree has the ability to make builds that just outright do not function. That’s not just bad, that’s significantly worse than bad. Half the tree is basically pointless depending on which spec you are playing.

I ask again, what is shadow’s identity? What makes it interesting? What connects it to the priest class as a whole? Is it the void stuff? Is it the psychic/spectral stuff?

Identity matters, identity creates direction, and direction makes meaningful choices. Shadow needs an identity within the class and it simply doesn’t have a strong one right now. The class tree needs utility and a lot of utility already exists in the shadow side of priests, but I feel like the void-ness of shadow is part of what holds blizzard back from giving things to holy/disc.

Dark arch is like the perfect style of cooldown for shadow, a consistent short cooldown that doesn’t have to dramatically change our rotation. Shorter, more frequent, and possibly charge stored cooldowns would be so much more interesting than overcapping insanity every 2 minutes and feeling like half your buttons just disappeared so you can slam 2 of them.

4 Likes
586

Feels like we’re in the lore forums. This thread is going nowhere…

I’ll leave you guys to it, have fun!

587

Uh no, I’m not.

Interesting is subjective though? I think Mindbender is interesting. You don’t I guess. Maybe I could better illustrate my point by doing what you did: Mindbender is just ‘regenerates mana.’ OK, well poison cleansing totem is ‘Sometimes cleanse poisons’ and Mana tide is ‘regenerates mana’ too.

Like we can cut any ability in the game down like this, so I really don’t understand why we’re being disingenuous about it for priests besides it’s not the kind of flavor YOU like, I suppose?

I also literally said ‘make a bunch of new utility’ is a completely different argument than ‘this class has no choices to make in its tree as-is’ There’s choice there for the healers. Not so much for shadow, but that just echoes what I’m saying.

…??? No you don’t, this is just random conjecture about balance. Priest hasn’t been balanced around any of this beforehand, and none of the mana costs in alpha have changed. You can either spend points going over there, or be more selfless in your talent choices.

Great, and priest doesn’t have the abilities to do this with. I don’t know why you keep dodging this.

If you want to make a bunch of all-new utilities, GREAT! That has absolutely nothing to do with spec theme. A bunch of totally random utility stuff can be made up on the fly and themed however it wants. But we can’t pretend shadow’s theme is preventing that from happening, somehow. That’s just making up something to fight against because I guess you don’t personally like the void theme - but it’s not a real reason.

There are combinations in the priest tree that were not possible before. They’re also not particularly good, nor will they be desired choices. The same is the case for Shaman. They will be playing with specific must-have utilities and otherwise taking damage. Maybe it sucks, but that’s the truth.

Well no, nothing quite that bad, but there are points in the tree where you can take a talent that you don’t have a previous talent for. Blizzard already said they want to eliminate these, and I think you’re preaching to the choir here because nobody likes Tithe evasion or ‘while shielded’ besides maybe specific discipline builds and it’s not like I’m particularly thrilled about that either. But you’ve gotten way off the plot here, because this isn’t about ‘void talents’ or whatever.

I disagree with this whole premise. A good design direction isn’t a specific qualifiable thing, and the design direction doesn’t need to have a specific identity that meshes back with the class as a whole.

Priest’s identity since alpha has been as a master of shadow and light magic. Similar to Druid, who’s only identity is that of nature magic.

Shadow priest itself has an identity as a master of shadow magic, just like a guardian druid has a mastery of bear form. And considering void magic is a branch of shadow magic, it’s perfectly fine for them to have dabbled in the void. That’s my point.

What about any of shadow’s utility has anything to do with the void?

There’s pretty much nothing Shadow has that is specifically void-themed that is a utility spell. So it’s clearly not that that’s keeping Blizzard from putting it in the class tree.

1 Like
588

Pack it up guys - Max (from Liquid) just said all the priest trees are good except for Shadow.

No changes to Disc or Holy will happen now.

589

The only reason you wouldn’t currently take enlightenment is because of flash concentration propped up your HPM so much, In any high level content, pvp, mythic plus, or raid you’re going to have to expect priest to have this, otherwise you just end up with them having too much mana where other healers would struggle.

Ok, let’s make a bunch of new Utility talents because we desperately need some. What should they be? Holy spells? Well then shadow can’t use them in shadow form. Disc spells? Yeah that’s fine, but now that’s kind of taking over the tree and the other specs aren’t particularly well represented. Shadow spells? Ok that might work, but what does that look like? Shadow is supposed to be the void caster right!? So we want to give them void spells…but that feels kind of weird for holy and disc…hmm maybe if there was some kind of cohesive element that bound this class together.

You can also make a shadow tree today doesn’t take VT, but that’s also not worth talking about. Bad combos aren’t good justification, shockingly,

As for the other point, how do you define “must have” utilities? If you have all your kicks covered do you need to take kick when you could get a second mana spring or stone skin? What if you have a frost mage, so you don’t really need a mass root, you can take wind rush. What’s the correct form of movement, and what’s better, a stronger defensive or one that is up more often?

The intent of the class tree is literally to mesh the class together?? It’s the stated design intent of the entire system.

And my point is that priest doesn’t do a good job of being a master of shadow and light magic. Druids do a fair job of being masters of nature. Shams do a fair job of being elemental totem lords, dks feel like complete dks.

Our tree is just 2 separate things slapped together, it’s a bad tree functionally and it’s a bad tree thematically and even though I don’t mind the void angle, I think it’s holding back a better class design. We can have both mechanical and thematic issues at the same time.

2 Likes
590

Not even sure how you can call someone dishonest for builds they like… Makes no logical sense. There ARE various sets ups.

No different then mind sear spam as dps now, … you are chanelling and it doesnt heal that much. At least swd is instant and with the ability for it now to heal as well… MB obiously heals and no i dont care if SFP heals. Its damage and damage is lovely in keys

Which they havent in 6 years so im not holding faith. I will take what they have given in the trees mana wise for 10 points Reggie.

591

Uh yes, but I don’t see why that’s relevant to the current discussion about theming.

As if mana hasn’t been a non-issue to several healers for whole expansions while others didn’t. This is a pretty regular balancing trope for Blizz - sometimes some healers are very mana efficient. That can be a strength.

Weird that this is an issue with shadowform, and wasn’t a unique thing that voidform brought, right? Maybe it’s not the theme that is the problem, but the underlying mechanic of spell school lockouts.

That said, it doesn’t have to be a holy spell.

No, you made this up. Shadow is the SHADOW spellcaster. Void is an ASPECT of shadow. Shadow’s design is not constrained to only void spells. Are you just skipping over what I say entirely?

Shadow and light magic. Similar to Druid’s nature magic, or shaman’s theming around the elementals.

I’m not talking about bad talent builds, but even if I was, the same can be said of every other class right now. You can purposefully screw up your build in every class. Shaman included.

No group in their right mind is going to say you shouldn’t have a backup kick.

I think what is must have is going to somewhat depend on the content you’re doing, but there’s not an experienced shaman in the world that isn’t going to take wind shear. There’s not a healer that’s going to pass up curse dispel either. Must haves do exist in these trees.

But again, I’m not against making up random utility - but that seems beyond the scope of the expansion. Not once have I said they shouldn’t create new spells. This is just some random thing you’re attributing to me.

That’s actually not Blizzard’s stated design intent. All they stated was that it should have a higher focus on utility, and be a place where you can draw on the identity of other specializations. That statement in and of itself means that they don’t necessarily think that the themes need to mesh perfectly (and let’s be honest, they simply can’t for every class - as fire mage became its own identity, pulling utility from frost magic is something that doesn’t technically mesh with it). The same should go for priest.

We simply don’t have thematic issues, though. It’s entirely mechanical problems. If shadow could cast holy spells in shadowform come DF, why would a utility spell having a holy theme be a problem for shadow to pick up? It fits the stated design goal, and if it’s useful, they’d take it! Fact of the matter is that it isn’t. The problem is entirely the holy spell school lockout, which is a mechanical problem, not a thematic one. Unless you want to say the shadow (and specifically the shadow, not void) theme is being pushed too extremely and that’s GUIDING mechanics. In which case you could be right about that. But I’d say we should pull BACK on the traditional shadow theme then.

592

We’re screwed.

3 Likes
593

I hope they do not considering the performance of the last rwf. Not to disrespect Max, but from what I understand, he does not play priest and, frankly, his raid team was unable to take world first under his leadership.

594

yeah its not like echo who only ran 3 priests on their WF kill…

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595

WoD wasn’t as good as people think it was. Legion Shadow happened because WoD Shadow had too many issues.

That was the answer to Shadowpriest feedback back in WoD: https://www.wowhead.com/news/patch-6-2-titles-ashran-excavation-preview-shadow-priest-feedback-247767

Talents were overall in a pretty sad spot. Mastery was a garbage stat. Single-target damage was poor, even with a full investement in CoP, Mastery and the Class trinket.
No burst AoE at all. Shadoworbs “didn’t work that well”…

1 Like