idk how this correlates but ok i guess.
I managed to make it half-way to 62 today, but I figure I can maybe get to 70 by the weekend. Once I max level I can better get an idea on what the healing situation is looking like.
They toned down Prismatic Echoes, but on the beta I don’t even see what it does unless its just flat baked into your Echo of Light so if you got 50% mastery you get an extra 6% healing… which mostly overheals anyway.
Holy Word Life is pretty much garbo though like I thought. It does less healing than a Renew if you don’t land the 35% targeted heal properly.
Lightweaver works like this though: you cast Flash Heal and it builds up 1 charge of the buff each time. So you can go Flash Heal → Heal → repeat infinitely or Flash Heal x2 → Heal → Heal.
Overall it’s a nerf because you have to cast twice as many Flash Heals a minute so your overall single target hps and hpm decreases. Its only really balanced out by Crisis Management which gives you an additional +15% increased critical chance.
So further Discipline testing:
Balance in All Things
This is REALLY good for us. This can perma-enhance a PTW DoT, and at 3 target spread, you can pretty much always have it rolling without casting it more than once or twice on any given pack.
Currently seems to not proc off Mindgames though, which limits its use a bit. Submitted that as a bug cause there’s no reason it shouldn’t.
Harsh Discipline
This is as strong as I expected. In dungeon 2 points into this is Tier set penance whenever you want it. Using a radiance with 3 or 4 DoTs out and a couple smites and you’ve got it. Once you have it, using it with radiance out pretty much instantly procs it again. It also stacks on itself once (like current tier set does) This is pretty much a mandatory talent.
Expiation
This increases the base damage of the spell by the 3s of PTW/SW:P. This means that our Shadow Word: Death bonus damage scales off those 3s of our DoT. I’m seeing this hit harder than Mindgames sometimes - like upwards of 12,000 and healing for 8k. Combine this with Death and Madness in the class tree and you’ve got some wild execute burst that also heals a ton. This seriously hits hard enough I can see raiders taking it.
It also actually kinda plays well with balance because you can Mind Blast/SW:D and then immediately re-apply PTW for the Balance buff - which factors back into your SW:D damage.
Divine Aegis
This thing might be broken at high crit. The shield stacks and refreshes its duration on each crit. With Atonement and Dots/Renew rolling that means it has a HUGE duration if you want it to. It goes up to 33% of your max health (can’t test if that is 33% of ANYONE’S max health or caps at the caster’s max health on them). Either way, you’re pretty much guaranteed to not overheal if you’re playing to it. My priest has 28% crit right now, and for reference I could get my divine Aegis shield to nearly 6k in a single renew application of atonement.
Light’s Wrath
This is getting boosted by balance in all things, and can easily hit up to 20k baseline with some atonements out. That said, I was hitting nearly the same amount with expiation SW:D. I think in dungeon we’ll be using that.
Overall thoughts is our atonement throughput is a lot higher now, and PW:S is kinda nuts with weal and woe/aegis. I think we’re looking really good, actually.
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It looks like they striped away the +4% mana return from Mind Games so that balances that ability out a bit so it’s not mandatory for healers.
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Quick Shadow Thoughts:
Harnessed Shadows seems rather weak and kind of pointless. The standard proc rate on Mind Flay in combination with SW:P and Apparitions seems decent enough.
Dark Evangelism should be a one point talent. It’s too expensive for the DPS gain it provides, e.g. Coalescing Shadow is a 10% DoT buff for a single point. It also makes the rather weak Dark Ascension pretty inaccessible, as there are far superior talents to use in the second tier.
Dark Ascension is too weak for a major cooldown. The Insanity doesn’t help, as you likely want to Mind Spike during it, but Insanity is spent on a DoT.
Mind Sear on anything <8 targets, where you can take full advantage of Psychic Link, Mind Spike and Coalescing Shadow is extremely weak.
Mind Melt offers no DPS gain, can just as well be removed.
Idol of Y’shaarj is extremely undertuned. Increasing your Shadowfiend by 5 seconds, or your haste by 5%, roughly every 3 to 2.5 minutes, is about a 0.5% dps gain. All numbers on this talents should be quadrupled.
3 Likes
Most important one - Coalescing Shadows
I like this ability. Really wish they would remove the mind spike part of it and replace it with Devouring Plague. I find it a disservice not to do this. MindSpike has its own thing going on, while DP feels like it gets further ignored.
Devour Plague
The main spender, yet ignored. Please make Shadoworbs work on DP.
DeathSPeaker
Very fun ability to use. huge improvement over Plasm. Definately using this as the main part of my pvp build.
Pain of death
pretty much another psychic link and buffs SWD. No hate, i like it. Just hate how there are soo many 2 talent points at the bottom of the trees in shadow.
Idol of C’thun
Its alright. WIsh it Proced more.
100 percent plz
Piercing shadows Same thing as Dark Evangelism. 1 point leave it as it is or 1 point and make it a falt 5% gain.
Way too much point bloat on the bottom tier of talents man. Really sucks.
Being able to heal again in shadow with light spells is a dream come true. The lower mana cost is an amazing touch. Finally, I feel i can do something without going room almost instantly. PWS does feel way better than SL live on SP. Renew feels good, PWS feels good, flash heal feels good, Shadowmend feels good, and mana usage feels really good!
Holy Word Life
Really powerful emergency heal when shadow priest is low HP. Love this spell.
Void tendrills
Very awkward spell to use. I have mixed feelings of this atm. I find myself wanting it to have more range every time. I think a simple increase in range would justify such a long cd on this thing.
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I really like the tree now. DA needs some polish, but the pathing is great. I’m willing to overlook the missing DP damage. Well done devs. You saved shadow.
What do you give up to pick DA? I feel there are a lot of good options down there. You’re still giving up something to get it. Curious.
Shadow Priest First Talent Tier Feedback
The first talent tier still suffers the same problems as previously. It has far too much utility.
- Devouring Plague, Shadowy Apparitions, and Vampiric Insight lock in 4 talent points.
- You have one talent point to spent between Silence and Dispersion (this is a loss compared to live)
- and Coalescing Shadows lock in another two talent points.
Now there is only one free talent point to spend in the first tier. This talent point can either go in Mind Sear (ignoring that Sear is massively undertuned), or Mind Spike.
This means, that compared to live, shadow looses two out of Dispersion, Silence and Psychic Horror. Tithe Evasion is equally out of reach.
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Another thing I forgot to mention:
Holy Nova/Rhapsody
This is terrible and the loss of Rank 2 Holy Nova is just a giant nerf. Unless Nova’s damage is going to be upped 100%, this almost shouldn’t ever be taken. Current Holy Nova in live is equivalent to a 5 stack (25 seconds) of Rhapsody. That is INCREDIBLY bad. Even stacking your Balance buff onto this does not make it hit hard enough to ever consider outside like a 15-20 stack. And for a ~100s cooldown it’s only doing as much as a Divine Star. Like I would never take this unless I’m playing a Holy Priest and have an extra point. At least echo healing will factor in a bit then.
In raid it’s easy, you only need 1 point of Harsh Discipline because 200 is easy to hit there. I’d sacrifice 1 point there, and not take the Light’s Wrath followup line (which I still think is rather bad).
In dungeon, personally I’d drop sins of the many for it if I felt I needed the healing. Basically making the choice a bit of extra bonus damage or a large chunk of healing. I also don’t think the Mindbender CD talent is amazing or anything either. So basically my personal build will be to take up to DA, take 2 points harsh discipline, then Mindbender, expiation and shadowflame prism.
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Question for you and the rest of shadow priests.
Regarding utility like Dispersion, it’s improved swap talent with mental fortitude, silence and Vampiric Embrace and it’s improved talent (if they came back to shadows tree)…
Would you rather they acted liked the previous shadow tree where they were off to the sides and thus optional?
Or
Would you rather some/all were forced to pick in order to path through to the actual throughput nodes?
My opinion is they they should be a forced pick. Otherwise you would always feel like you make a bad choice when you could have gotten a DPS talent instead.
But from what I have been gathering, seems there is a mix of choice vs forced.
I think if it’s forced, then you are balanced around that fact so in a sense more power is put into the actual baseline spec/DPS talents because of the fact that you have to be forced to take utility talents.
If utility talents like the ones I mentioned were not forced and left optional, then imo it seems questionable to even have them in the tree just to take up space when everyone would want to avoid them for more DPS.
Curious what everyone’s stance is on this.
I’m honestly fine with it in the class tree. There e are way too much talent points to spend in The spec tree right now, especially towards the bottom. I think they need to reduce those 2 point nods
If it goes back to spec tree, I would argue to just make it baseline.
If it has to be in the tree, just put it on the side like dispersion imo
If you look at the warriors Fury and Arms tree for example, to go down the middle (which you would do) you are forced to get utility.
I firmly believe we need the same for shadow.
I don’t think it’s good practice to force anything really in the tree path. But that’s just me. I’m already annoyed with the mind spike forcement as it is
It feels bad as Holy having to take use up two talent points on lowering Mind Blast’s CD so you can access Mindgames. Mind Blast is only slightly better than Smite but all it does is complicate the rotation and doesn’t reduce the CD of HW: Chastise. Now if Improved Mind Blast lowered the cooldown of Empyreal Blaze when that’s taken, that would be pretty neato :))) Also Tools of the Cloth should flat out increase Smite and Holy Nova’s damage as well as PW: Shields absorb.
2 Likes
Visually it looks like it might be “central” to the spec based on where it’s located.
But you don’t have to pick it up and I would think it would be a bit more accepting or tolerated if it was a bit more to the side to visually show it’s an offshoot of the specs capability vs the illusion of it seeming like it’s a central must have focus.
Are people testing numbers without max conduits/covenant passives, no set piece bonuses etc?
It seems to me on paper (and from PTR) that we’re going to be weaker at level 61 without enough points to fill out the talent trees, just to get back to where we are today when we get to level 70. Shouldn’t level 60 be equivalent to what we have today…gaining additional power by 70 through talents. It doesn’t feel like that to me on the PTR.
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Well the fact that there’s a few talents around it. Especially shadow orb, it’s annoying.
It’s interaction would be better if it was Devour plague and mind blast vs how it is now, minblast and mind spike.
Not the visual that is annoying, is it’s presence in the spec itself. Really don’t enjoy it right now
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I made a feedback on ptr to remove/disable legendaries, tier set, and covenant stuff for prepatch. It’s hard to really analyze everything with how things are now
I heard a rumor from someone in Beta that they are adding legendary items for Evokers to use during the 1 month of pre-patch…so, not sure they’re going to turn them off. I forgot about things like procs from legendary items though. I just feel like I’m going to step into DF day 1 weaker than on the last day of SL (It’s been this way for several expansions due to borrowed power leaving, I know)…but still.
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