Now now, let us not forget power word fortitude! Or has that been pruned too?
Hopefully that choice is gone and we can just get both abilities.
i dont think anyone has ever said DA was the broken part of old disc and it was stricktly that shield spam was why absorb disc is bad.
but we shield spam now to apply atonement
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I feel tuning will be a lot easier too because of the trees. 1 talent is a lot easier to tweak when you can play with placement + a single talent is worth a lot less than retail.
Weâll see what the trees offer but I feel DA can be a good addition while remaining easy to adjust if âbrokenâ
yes and back than shields were significantly more powerful than they are today
The biggest comment Iâd make is I hope the holy nova/smite damage increase while you yourself are shielded are all gone unless someoneâs made the executive decision to massively buff PW:S for holy as well as disc, or at least self-shielding. Donât have talents that just donât work outside a training dummy.
Chances are they are not removing them.
PW:S is getting this buff largely because it helps out other specs and makes the shield talents more interesting for them. Interesting enough? No not at all. But they did specifically say they wanted other specs to consider using PW:S.
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Yeah, Iâve been playing priest since Cata. Iâm braced for the worst. Like literally if the tree comes out and they nerfed Crystalline Reflection to sometimes kill you I wonât even bat an eye.
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PW:S changes are almost certainly for everyone. But the underlying issue imo there is that Holy Nova is really bad. I hope they make it a time efficient mana hog that you can spam in an emergency situation, not âtickle the rogue out of Stealthâ
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I canât begin to predict Blizzâs philosophies on priest. Of course it would make sense for a clothy, defenseless class to be able to make up some of that weakness with stronger self-shielding. Thatâs a logical thing to assume.
But this is a Blizzard that in BFA removed PW:S from hpriest entirely and then proceeded to remove even the most useful of QoL shadow spells for some ridiculous nonsense about âspec identityâ that they have now entirely repudiated in the wake of Classicâs success in favor of class identity which of course is what most players actually want.
So to imagine they even designed the priest class with all specs in mind fairly is a leap of faith in itself, which also btw should be BASELINE for all priests and NOT a talent, because thatâs silly that LoF is a talent point. Itâs the most gag-worthy thing Iâve even seen about Dragonflight and why I still havenât pre-ordered if thatâs their mentality.
I liked spec identity, personally, except in how they painted themselves into a corner by essentially doubling the workload needed to keep everything distinct. How well the conceit works really depends on the class and spec â thereâs not really that much separating rogues, and druid conceptually is not supposed to be that locked into a specialization.
The problem with the pruning for priest in Legion and BFA was that they took tools away and didnât adequately replace them, not actual identity.
If they were going to make PW:S Disc only I feel they would have gone and said that outright, especially when these changes are responding to the issue that the class tree offers no real freedom for anyone but disc.
As you say, trying to create a separate identity for each and every spec in their entire toolkit proved beyond their capabilities.
As for priest, I mean, they did replace most of what they stole away from the class, in a way. But entirely with borrowed power. But what too many are failing to notice is theyâve carried that forward in Shadowlands, i.e. they havenât taken a good hard look at the priest class, normalized the specs and reduced borrowed power to what could be considered âancillary.â
And thatâs what Iâm still worried about. Of course disc was S-tier 9.0 because Spirit Shell OP, and holy is S or A-tier 9.2+ because of literally a pile of overdue buffs to every spell power ever and maybe itâs too much, but mechanically hpriest is still reliant on its FC legendary and a huge pile of covenant survival/mobility stuff that all goes away and no thought has been given to the base class again.
Alpha testers seem to be happy with Hpriest on survivability, but the mobility concerns me, especially as it was not one of the things listed in the preview. Granted, I donât think our concerns about mobility are what most of the posters are talking about, so itâs possible theyâre addressing that and weâll only see when the talents actually go up.
I think a lot of posters have been pretty sharp on the throughput issue caused by the loss of FC specifically, and thatâs definitely something to be wary of. Itâs a combination of spec-feel and power and thatâs really hard to speculate on from the preview given.
Remember too the alpha testers are testing heroic dungeons for the most part, not much raid content yet.
Of course survival in an heroic is one thing (especially after end-game gearing) but survival in a raid setting is already severely strained.
The thing to note about Holy is that itâs had the same exact baseline heal buttons for almost 15 years now. The last time they actually updated one of our heals was in Cata when they split off Greater Heal (called Heal now) and Flash Heal.
Holys really never really been a jack-of-all as it tends to focus almost entirely in mainly spamming 1 button each expansion as its primary heal. Abilities like CoH, PoM, and Holy Words are just filler abilities in-between your 1 button mashing.
Vanilla was mainly Flash Heal (or downranked Heal spells) and Prayer of Healing. TBC we spammed Circle of Healing (if you look at the logs youâll see hundreds of CoH casts a fight). WOTLK it was actually Renew spamming later on in ICC. You could hot the entire raid.
BFA you spammed PoH in raids. In Shadowlands you spammed Heal/Flash Heal. Itâs entirely by design by the developers as things like conduits/legendaries and azerite armor traits lean strongly towards buffing up one of your abilities.
Dragonflight likely wonât be any different unless they want to actually fully commit to giving Holy 3 different viable playstyle choices. Renew HoT build, single target healing build, and group heal build. You pick what works best for the fight⊠otherwise weâre just going to spam PoH again in raids and nothing else.
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I donât think thatâs a safe assumption. Theyâve said theyâre removing throughput options from the class tree, and I donât think they provide enough additional functionality aside from throughput to justify their existence.
Iâm surprised to hear this perspective. I think the general view of holy is, was and usually has been âjack of all trades.â
Admittedly, in terms of filler theyâve vacillated between SoL Flash Heal/Heal/Binding Heal or renew spam, but I suppose itâs still felt âjack of all tradesâ to me at least because all or most of the reactive healing tools are still there, even if, as you say, poorly tuned.
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Same! One of the reasons Iâve liked holy is because it feels like it has a heal for every situation. As someone who loves reactive healing, big numbers, and having lots of different heals (even at the cost of class/spec utility) Iâve always loved Holy.
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Disc is shaping up to be a very tank-friendly healer in DF. In the current M+ meta, tanks are very self-sustaining and require very little attention. But what if that changes in DF, and tanks require more attention from healers? If that happens, tank-friendly healing specs will rise in value.
How is Disc becoming increasingly tank-friendly? Some bullet points:
- Holy Word: Life, now with a massive throughput boost. Of course, this spell is available to all specs. However, it gets an additional throughput boost to Disc via Grace (edited for clarity).
- PW: Shieldâs absorb will be substantially boosted.
- Harsh Discipline will grant Disc an incredible single-target heal nuke.
- Offensive absorbs like Mind Games and Mind Restrain, both of which are more likely to be taken by Disc than Holy.
- Pain Suppression. And Pain Suppression will get a cooldown reduction whenever you cast PW: Shield.
- Void Shift. This is a bona-fide tank saver.
- It will be much easier to get HoTs on the tank by talents that let you spread Purge the Wicked faster.
- Simply casting Renew on the tank will grant the combo of 10% extra healing on the tank and 3% damage reduction via Lenience and Renewed Faith.
This makes the generous assumption that Disc will be able to pick up all of these talents/abilities. But even if Disc can only pick up 75% of them, that still amounts to a very tank-friendly healer.