Going into S1 Midnight we will have way less haste, no S3 tier set, and Mind Blast is INCREASING in cooldown from 24 to 28 seconds (seriously, wtf?!). Voidweaver is going to feel absolutely miserable to play compared to S3 TWW. Also new Evangelism. I can see it being nice for raids, pvp with instant radiance, and maybe Oracle. But for voidweaver it’s a major nerf as well. Standing still to spam Radiance for 8 seconds as voidweaver is the most terrible design I’ve ever seen.
Not to mention, I foresee mana being a big issue. We are losing Throes of Pain, Death and Madness, and Mindbender is increasing from a 30 to 60 second cooldown. There are two new minor mana related talents, but losing Throes of Pain and effectively increasing Mindbender’s cooldown by over 100% (because of being able to extend it less) means we are going to regen A LOT less mana than on live.
Oracle is going to feel awful too because of losing Premonition… which is one of the most unique and interesting spells ever. Especially when combined with losing S3 4 piece which gives you way more premonitions to play with.
The talent trees look awful too. There are just way too many talent points you want that you can’t get beacuse the trees are so bloated with 2 point nodes (which is a problem for every spec in Midnight I’ve looked at). Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? I thought we were phasing out all the 2 point nodes but apparently we are filling trees with them again.
They need to reverse all the garbage changes that make the spec less fun to play. S3’s tier set should be baked into the new 4th talent row of each hero spec. Void Blast cast time reduction and Entropic Rift growth for Voidweaver. And Oracle needs to not lose insight at the very least but having the S3 4 pieces extra insights baseline would just feel so good.
Shadow looks awful too. The tree is a complete mess and forcing us into Shadowy Apparitions is absolute smooth brain design. Apparitions should have been deleted a long time ago. I mainly pvp’d on shadow and it looks to be terrible in that regard too. All self sustain is gone compared to S1 and S2 TWW and no more Shadow Word Pain or Psychic Horror (stun) is the final nail in the coffin.
There are definitely a few good looking changes, but overall disc and shadow look to be huge regressions. Can’t speak for Holy because I’ve barely played it.
I know “it’s only alpha” but the class just looks dead next expansion. End rant.
My biggest issue with disc is just how boring it is becoming. Voidweaver is basically get up your rift spam your smite/void blast, and if Oracle you get a 2nd penance which is cool but its still largely the same gameplay you Radiance the party, shield the tank and spam your DPS rotation, that isn’t even interesting.
Its been the same dull gameplay that just keeps getting more and more dumbed down. People act like “oh you have to prepare” as if other specs don’t and as if encounters are not heavily scripted meaning its less “should I make a decision now” and more “I read the boss mechanics and should barrier here” that you decide long before you ever enter the dungeon/raid. So much of the spec has become automatic and plays itself.
Its all ironic because the whole reason they went this style was to try and shift away from the ease of bubble botting and allow skill expression but they really haven’t added anything to the class that actually requires skill expression, with the exception of managing Premonition to ensure you have the right one up when you need it but that is going away as well.
I’m actually excited for Holy Oracle in Midnight as it actually looks like PoM will be fun to use again and have some decent interactions with the kit while Oracle for Disc looks like a “cast on CD fishing for Void Shield procs” kinda gameplay which doesn’t really change anything because you should be using penance pretty much on CD anyway.
Any recommendations on more interesting healers to play? The only other I’ve played to 3k recently was fistweaver. I do enjoy it but spinning crane kick creates this massive lag for the whole party during massive pulls which really kills it for me. Also being melee kinda sucks sometimes and I still can’t seem to do more sustained damage than voidweaver so it just feels like a worse priest to me.
Depends on what you want. I’m more of a traditionalist and don’t really like the DPS to heal mechanics, and think they are inherently bad design.
If you like the aggressive playstyle though Evoker does some decent damage with its breaths and feels reasonable fast and engaging with its constantly flying around, positioning to maximize breath effects and the like.
I can’t speak for how things will feel in Midnight as I haven’t played the alpha and am only going off WoWhead tooltips, dev notes and speculation.
It will all depend on what fantasy you like the most.
If you just want a healer more complex or with more difficulty into midnight, I would say Mistweaver or Preservation are looking to be the more difficult healers to play.
Rather, a lot of people don’t like the rotating nature of Premonition or the meh effects of Solace and Piety, but everyone loves Insight, and the set bonus made every Premonition an Insight buff. Chaining strong CDs back-to-back is fun! Who knew! I also loved the insta-Radiance that came with every Premonition, and now that effect has basically been moved to Evang with double the CD.
Because of low secondary stats, I foresee oracle being mandatory in dungeons at the start of xpac. Voidweaver will improve as time goes on.
I don’t know I’m pretty excited about all the healers really. Oracle disc is looking nicer than VW though.
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