(BETA) Dragonflight Priest Talent Tree Feedback Thread

maybe they can just change it to cast immediately without additional input

What they really need to fix is the missing synergy and connection between talents. It’s possible to select talents that will have literally no use.
I can select the talent that SW:D deals 20% less dmg on the caster - but I didn’t even have to skill SW:D. That’s a trap that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

im sure there are currently good examples of this but from what i can see SWD is baseline under priest tree so you get SWD no matter what you do.

I dont think traps like that will actually exist in the long run anyway.

Eh… no. SW:D is not baseline. It’s one of the first talents you can pick in the tree, but you don’t have to. Read my post again, please. I tried it.

Well I was using Disc to test it out and both talents are inexplicably pre-spent for disc at no cost while shadow and holy only get 1 each. I’m not sure if that would be final but there doesn’t seem to be any legitimate reason for that, nor am I concerned that such a thing would go live. Even if it did, it probably wouldn’t stick around for long.

Either that, or both swd and pom will be baseline

Just for clarification:

As Holy you get Prayer of Mending pre-selected for free.

As Discipline you get both Prayer of Mending and Shadow Word: Death pre-selected for free.

As Shadow you get Shadow Word: Death pre-selected for free.

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Shadow Priest Talent Trees Feedback

Hello internet! This post is a collection of feedback gathered over the last few days in regards to the new Priest and Shadow Priest talent trees that were released for Dragonflight. Overall the community seems excited to jump into Dragonflight to experiment with the new talents and mix them in with our current playstyles. Before going into the mega lists of feedback below I wanted to first highlight things that the community likes about the new talent trees.

  • The Venthyr Covenant ability, Mindgames is a pleasant addition to the Priest kit that we are glad to see back
  • Some new flavors added to enhance Shadow’s AoE rotation
  • Idol talents are interesting and thematic
  • Reworked Dark Thoughts into Vampiric Insight
  • Power Infusion and Twins are easily accessible
  • Several favorite current Shadow Priest talents have returned in Dragonflight

Priest Tree Feedback

The below points of feedback are specific to the Priest Class tree. Thoughts on the Shadow Priest tree follow this section.

  • As a Shadow Priest we get to talent into everything we want from a DPS perspective, no hard choices available
  • There are not options available in the holy/discipline space you would talent into as Shadow that would give us meaningful off healing
  • Assuming Twist of Fate still procs on damage events this is a welcomed buff to Shadow’s execute
  • Swapping the Mind Blast Absorb talent (Mind Restrain) with Improved Mind Blast would give a more clear build path of “damage” considering the options that come before and after.
  • Twins of the Sun Priestess and casting Power Infusion on an ally can cause gameplay that is not fun for the Priest.
    • No way to know how much damage someone got from a cast, making it hard to attribute the gain back to the Priest for parsing/logs
    • Power Infusion is currently able to be cast on ally pets. This can cause arguably bad gameplay where it might be beneficial to PI someone’s pet, or even your own if you do not want to give up your cooldown
    • Annoyance with using this could be if you want to give it to someone that wants Power Infusion every 3 minutes, but you are a 2 minute spec. It should be fun to increase someone else’s damage in your raid, not annoying or tedious for you.
  • Translucent Image conduit coming back as a talent is huge, although I wish the DR lasted for the duration of Fade rather than just the first 5 seconds. Giving it the full 10 seconds makes it slightly more versatile and at just 10% does not seem to outlandish.
  • Tithe Evasion only reducing Shadow Word: Death push back by 10/20% feels too little considering Shadow Word: Death is a core part of the Shadowflame Prism rotation. Would rather this be increased or reworked to something else instead.
  • Although Mindgames was never the hardest hitting covenant ability, it is nice to have access to it should it work for certain situations where bosses have heal mechanics.
  • Shadowflame Prism being where it is in this tree sets it up to be a core playstyle of Shadow. While certainly this playstyle can be fun, it can also greatly contribute to increased traffic and Insanity overload. Having Shadowflame Prism as a talent is fun, but in its current position it will be used by every Shadow Priest all the time, which might be overkill for this talent in its current state.
    • If Shadowflame Prism were to be uncapped in AoE it could take over Shadow’s AoE playstyle from Searing Nightmare with some additional tuning.
  • With the new talent Puppet Master is this properly extended the way Shadowflame Prism/Idol of Y’Shaarj works? Adding other pets to this buff could introduce a fun pet build with Idol of Yogg-Saron.

Shadow Priest Tree Feedback

  • The top of the Shadow tree feels unnecessarily restrictive. Having to talent into Vampiric touch, Devouring Plague, and Mind Sear all to get access to the tree do not make for meaningful choices.
    • Mind Sear is required to talent into Silence, Dispersion, Fortress of the Mind, and Psychic Horror. None of these options are at all related to Mind Sear’s area of expertise.
    • Mind Sear is the only option of the three that there are certainly cases where we wouldn’t mind not talenting into, such as pure single target. However since it is required to get to so many other core utility spells even in single target we will be forced to take it.
    • Would prefer all or some of these to be made baseline or even moved into easy to access places in the Priest class tree instead to free up more options in our tree and give us more expression rather than locking us in.
  • Searing Nightmare needs to be reworked or removed going into Dragonflight. It fills a need within our kit to give us some defining way of AoE when Misery does not make sense, but it is not fun to play with. Having our AoE be tied to Mind Sear before we can press the button and then just spamming it leads to a boring repetitive rotation that is the least engaging part of Shadows kit. Mind Sear should be a filler spell in AoE, not the gateway to our AoE damage. The spec is fundamentally centered around DoTs but this playstyle lets us ignore that completely.
    • There are many new and interesting talents that highlight our other spells, but buffing these other spells will not have value in our AoE rotation that is so dominated by Searing Nightmare.
    • One suggestion would be to remove the requirement to be channeling Mind Sear and instead give the spell a short cooldown OR moderate Insanity cost. In addition, change the effect to copy the DoTs on your current target and replicate them to all nearby targets in an AoE radius (including Devouring Plague, it is a plague after all). This keeps the focus on our DoTs and gives us an easy and defined way to spread them quickly with added synergy with Idol of N’Zoth.
  • Shadow has a seemingly disproportionate amount of utility spells in its spec specific tree. While Shadow is part of a hybrid class our spec tree should primarily focus in damage abilities like other specs (i.e. Frost Death Knight).
    • There are 11 total points in our tree that are not damage increases, out of 55 total. This feels like too many considering Shadow is a DPS spec. This causes us to make choices between doing damage or getting our interrupt or main defensive, which is not a meaningful choice for a DPS spec.
    • Some of this utility should either be combined with other spells or made baseline to reduce the amount of conflict we have with picking up utility over throughput.
    • Choosing different utility spells to get like Silence vs. Dispersion vs. Vampiric Embrace could be an interesting choice, but not when they are choices against other damage options in the tree. Some or all of these options might make more sense in the Priest Tree so that Holy/Discipline might feel inclined to go deeper into the Shadow tree to get them.
  • Having two nodes/points dedicated towards Vampiric Embrace on the Shadow tree will lead to these almost never being selected. Giving up damage to talent into this does not make sense when it is a severely lacking cooldown. If it was reworked into something that was more desirable to have in a group and didn’t require us to give up damage it would be more useful.
    • Instead of healing random nearby allies, if it was instead reworked to be a raid-wide leech buff for some amount of time that would give it much needed life and also give your raid a great reason to bring a Shadow Priest in, even if you already have a Discipline or Holy Priest.
    • Hallucinations being a talent now instead of baseline will also face similar issues as it simply will never be worth taking over getting more damage into your kit, especially now that most Shadow Priests will opt to take Angelic Feathers over Body and Soul.
  • Dark Thoughts was removed in part because it “placed a large emphasis on Mind Flay and made it feel mandatory to keep it always channeled to roll for a proc.” This makes a lot of sense as Mind Flay should be a filler spell in our kit, and not something we want to game or play around. The other added benefit is that we will often interrupt our Mind Flay channel to handle mechanics and/or move so making sure it is just a filler spell makes that feel better.
    • However, taking this lesson and applying it to the Shadow tree there are several new talents that buff Mind Flay and seem to go against the same philosophy that caused the removal/rework of Dark Thoughts. Specifically Monomania, Void Touched, Rot and Wither, and Idol of C’Thun all add power to Mind Flay and/or Mind Sear. In order to avoid problems with Mind Flay being more powerful than non-filler abilities these effects should consider being reworked off of other spells such as Shadowy Apparitions.
    • Monomania and Abyssal Knowledge specifically put too much power into filler spells, especially when they unlock other parts of the tree.
  • The transition back from Dark Thoughts to Vampiric Insight is nice for the removal of the cast while channeling that resulted in clunky gameplay (that was highlighted in the blue post) with Mind Flay is an extremely positive change.
    • However, this may end up feeling bad to play if it doesn’t provide the extra charge like Dark Thoughts did instead of resetting the cooldown. If it purely resets the cooldown we could lose significant value when we already had one of our Mind Blasts ready or didn’t talent Monomania for the second Mind Blast charge which will result in awkward feeling gameplay. The proc providing an extra temporary charge makes it feel significantly smoother.
  • Surrender to Madness is on the new Shadow Priest tree, but without being reworked it is unlikely to see significant use. Since it is still a direct choice against Hungering Void and we will most likely always have Shadowflame Prism we will generally speaking have more Insanity than we need. Surrender to Madness’ primary gain is in Insanity, and therefore will hardly see use or have a reason to give up Hungering Void. Getting to use this talent with Ancient Madness is definitely a buff, but that “second” Voidform will be without any of our other cooldowns so without any type of stat or damage buff this will still be underwhelming in comparison to Hungering Void.
  • Shadow Crash and Void Torrent being the gateway options to any of the Idol talents does not fit in a tree where nothing they do is buffed or altered by the options around them. In almost every case we take them because they are “in our way” and not because we actively want to pick them up. I would prefer these options be moved around or reworked to make more sense in the columns they are unlocking.
    • Would prefer an alternate option instead of Shadow Crash regardless of positioning such as Cascade. Traveling projectile spells are often more frustrating than fun to press.
    • Void Torrent is also significantly nerfed any time our filler is buffed, which Mind Flay is several times in this tree.
  • Mental Fortitude and Sanguine Teachings do not feel like fun choices to add to Shadow’s spec specific talent tree. Specifically Sanguine Teachings will force us to weave Power Word: Shield’s into our rotation for damage and/or ask our healers to needlessly shield us. While Mental Fortitude does add a shield, this will most likely be broken often due to Shadow Word: Death doing so much damage and being a core spell we use with Shadowflame Prism. Buffing Shadow’s throughput conditionally if we are shielded is not gameplay that sounds engaging.
    • Mental Fortitude again forces us to choose utility over more damage, and is a requirement to get into Idol of N’Zoth or Idol of Y’Shaarj which are not related. This option probably does not make sense in the DPS spec talent tree, but if it did it would make more sense as a one-off node from Vampiric Touch.
  • Our bottom section of talents has 22 total points available, which is more than any other talent tree preview currently available. One of the problems we noticed because of this is we have significantly less choice between nodes in our bottom, ideally most impactful section, of our talent tree. Specifically some of the 2 or 3 point options being reduced to 1 or 2 point options would give us more opportunities for unique and interesting builds.
    • The following talents also feel generally underwhelming considering they are in the bottom section of the tree. We would have more engaging choices if these were moved elsewhere, paths changed, or removed from the tree entirely.
      • Void Apparitions
      • Unleash the Shadows
      • Eidolic Intuition
      • Abyssal Knowledge
  • The Shadow Priest tree is lacking cohesion from top to bottom in terms of build identities. Other trees like Frost Death Knight have clear identities when navigating vertically down the tree, i.e. AoE and Single Target. In our tree we have options that enhance or buff Shadowy Apparitions on the left side AND the right-bottom side. If the tree was reworked to have clear patterns on each side it would be easier to navigate. The following is a list of specific oddities found that follow these patterns:
    • Fortress of the Mind, Silence, Dispersion, and Psychic Horror being locked behind Mind Sear. Would make more sense to swap Mind Sear with Devouring Plague or move Mind Sear to the Priest class tree.
    • Psychic Link, Void Torrent, and Shadow Crash being gateway talents to the bottom section of the tree where nothing before or after is related or a clear identity (i.e. Shadow Crash side is clearly AoE and Void Torrent side is clearly single target)
      • Damnation would make more sense than Shadow Crash since it is applicable in more situations generally.
    • Idol of Yogg-Saron is on the right side of the tree whereas most Shadowy Apparition talents are on the left side. Could make sense to simply swap this with Idol of Y’Shaarj
    • Idol talents feel like the capstone of our talent tree, yet the options directly before or adjacent them do not seem related. These feel like the core themes the tree should be based around from top to bottom finishing with those Idols. Baking this into a four option node at the start or end of the tree might help define the build better without feeling like you are missing out on so many other options.
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Dark reprimand and dark star baby!!! We’re twilight priests now!

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You’re totally right! That’s why I was still talking specifically about Holy. :smile:

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We got lightwell back amen priesthood! You’re Welcome.

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I may have missed it, but still kinda sad there isn’t an alternative to Searing Nightmare for AOE. Like some Shadow Crash machine gun/ VT spreader/ Black Hole type deal.

I see a shadowfiend and shadowfriends build, ghosties build, faster dots build with channeling MF/MSear. Just have to put it into practice to really see how it plays.

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I honestly don’t even know if flash heal needs buffs with how talents are laid out now.

Renewed faith was already decent for throughput, just renew kinda sucked to cast. But with renew just being significantly better now, holy priest getting access to Twist of Fate and benediction being pretty much free to take it feels like that’s going to be the play. Especially considering we can get all that and still get imp shadow fiend or death throes.

So i have a few issues and a few questions.
Is shadow mend still going to replace flash heal?..if so it it simply a down grade like it has been since its inception…i recommend it remain separate from flash heal or just remove it.
Can we remove the necessity of talenting dispersion in order to obtain psychic horror. Dispersion is easily the worst defensive CD in the game…press the button and you cant do anything except move. Dispersion needs a rework or to just be thrown in the bin and replaced with a not so limiting damage reduction CD
Finally i see some people complaining about PI…when one plays a team based game…having utility to help your team is generally a good thing why would you not want to boost billys dps in order for your team to down the boss? In short, dont get rid of cool abilities because a few people dont like to be team players.

That brings a lot of other problems with it.
Of course everyone in the group wants to be the one guy who is allowed to boost his parses and do big d*ck dps. That’s just how it often works, but it creates jealousy and often its the priest who’s finding himself to be blamed for giving some other person PI.
When it comes to PI I often feel like I’m being surrounded by those birds from Finding Nemo.

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jealousy over what?..the point is to down the bosses as a team not to top some third party website…when you raid you already know the person that will benefit the most from PI and although that individual may change over time (based on gear and class balance) it is pretty simplified in my opinion. timmy does the most dmg when PI’d give it to timmy.

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It’s just the reality, whether you like it or not. I don’t like it how people are behaving over PI but it is how it is. But it’s one of the many reasons why a lot of players want PI gone.

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You don’t have to invest in any damage except holy fire. Chastise generally needs to be taken in raid builds because of Salvation resets anyway. That said, it’s good that its over there because that part of the tree more signifies single target healing vs AoE healing till the third tier.

The only reason you invest points into that side for raid at all would be symbol, really. And it’s literally almost impossible to get to the 3rd tier of talents without grabbing symbol anyway.

I don’t think this is correct - Heal is still a great filler, and flash heal saves mana when SoL procs. Heal may no longer be your bread and butter spell, but it’s far from useless? Especially considering a 20% cast time reduction. Even without flash conc, Resonant is worth using, and we’ve got 4 holy words now. And Divine Words isn’t connected to FC at all - it’s completely new and can be used with primarily with sanctify if wanted.

Biggest disagree is here. Flash Concentration is not healthy for the spec. It kills the ability to use pretty much anything in the priest’s toolkit EXCEPT for heal. That’s not the kind of power they should want to bring back.

This iteration loses FC but in return it gets a boosted renew, and pretty much free renewed faith with benediction/pom with access to twist of fate, and with enough investment bender, and a really strong capstone for literally any content in divine words with its 1 min cd.

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Yeah well those people are selfish and the game shouldnt be designed around them(and it isnt hence the reason PI is in the game)…thats the reality

Yes I have to when I want to get deeper into the rows.

That’s completely false. Chastise doesn’t count for Salvation.

Mhm, I don’t agree with this. I’ve never used Heal during BfA or in 9.0 when I’d still played with Harmonious Apparatus instead of FC. Slow, a tiny amount of heal… it was not really a filler, it just wasn’t in use. It was much more helpful and mana efficient to just Smite a bit instead of wasting time with Heal.

That’s the only thing that might save it a bit, but I have to see this in practice first. But for this talent it’s again the case that some weird niche talents have to be picked iirc to get there. The Holy Nova stuff is just really useless for raiding.

Depends. If just the slow and mana-heavy old AoE-playstyle is coming back, so FC would always be the strongest playstyle, just as it is now, you may be right. But we’re still WiP i guess. As I stated in my feedback post, the alternative for an FC playstyle should be a skillable strong AoE build that heavily enhances spells like PoH and other group healing spells.
If they went this way then both playstyles could be a great option and be chosen by personal preference, not by how broken it is.

I don’t think that a playstyle around Renew is exciting or will be that efficient, numbers- and manawise. As I said, we have to witness these things in practice, but I’m very sceptical about that.

I don’t want to be rude, but you sound like someone who’s profiting from PI either as a Shadow player or as a player who always gets PI in his raidgroup. :smile: In that position I’d also don’t wanna lose it. I think there’s no problem with keeping PI but it would be better as a personal CD so it’s still in the group, but there are no fights over it.

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Delete PI. Holding a 1.5 minute Void Eruption around this 2 min cd and having all of Shadow’s damage sunk into this CD window while being anemic outside it is not a fun experience.

Delete PI for Shadow. Bake 15% haste into Void Eruption and make it a 1 min cd with CDR based on shadowy apparition procs for AoE purposes.

Make Psychic Link work off SWP instead of VT. Make Shadow Crash apply VT. Make Searing Nightmare trigger the bonus damage automatically on targets at certain insanity threshholds, or extend the cast time of Mindsear to not make Searing Nightmare such a pain to cast.

By deleting PI you can bake more damage back into the core spells, so Shadow doesn’t feel like it lives and dies by cooldown windows.

Since shadow has low baseline mobility, it needs to be less punishing when mechanics force you to move during cooldowns.

You could make Void Eruption give the cast while moving effect even, or at least allow casting Mindblast while moving.

Make Void Bolt hit all targets affected by SW:P. even if for less damage or with a damage dropoff component based on target count.

The takeaway here for Blizzard should be that Shadow feels good to play on single target or up to 2-3 targets, but feels absolutely horrendous and handicapped in an AOE situation.

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