Could use some more Holy and Disc Priests in the beta forum. It’s like 90% Shadow Priest posts.
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I wish I could be there. I’d definetely work actively on giving feedback 
To be Fair… I think the existence of “Shadow” as the only DPS spec for Priest… and the fact that by its very nature, it has a lot of “unique” features that Holy and Disc don’t have for “reasons” but from a design perspective, those “reasons” for the most part don’t really fit on a “thematic” level causes a negative feedback loop that bleeds into Holy and Disc design.
That means any design decision they make for both Holy and Disc (Class tree) will HAVE to consider how it impacts Shadow and vice versa. Then add another level of complexity is 2 specs (Holy and Disc) need to do a similar thing (being a healer) while remaining unique in their own way further complicates the design process and also impacts Shadow.
You can take Paladin and it having a clear Tank/DPS/Heal spec that all use the same type of magic (Holy) grants a lot more design wiggle room to keep the theme / fantasy while still allowing a unique take without much of overlapping in odd non thematic fitting ways.
Blizzard bit off more then they can chew when trying to build a class tree for Priests because of how unique each spec is in its own way compared to the class and they NEEDED to give it a lot of attention and time. I think they realize this now… but time has sadly seemed to have run out or rapidly about to.
I don’t want to hear about how little time there is left to balance. How many expansions have Priests heard “well, we didn’t get to this but wait for the X.1 patch…”
It’s tired and unacceptable.
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We still have 3 months until the expansion launches and based on what I’ve seen on the beta so far: literally like 60% of the stuff is done. The quest zones/hubs are all done except for missing voice overs and incomplete cutscenes.
A lot of the new dungeons are in… untested for M+ and the raids. There’s no borrowed power system for them to waste their time on so their attention just has to focus on the new talent system.
We had the horrible 1 month wait just to get an update which is inexcusable to say the least. Now we’re getting at least weekly updates and feedback. Just treasure what it is for now.
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I would like more development for Priest. But I have my reservations that not much will change from what we have now.
I would love to be surprised if ends up not being the case.
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The last 100 posts have been an absolute lynching.
In shadowlands Divine Image had 25% chance to trigger?
I remember Divine image doing good ONLY if you got lucky and got high procs.
It seems we are getting a lot of Holy word cdr in talents so spamming more holy words means more Divine Images procs.
I’m not a math guy but it could be good.
If you ask me tho I find Divine Word better just because there’s no RNG on it and you can make use of it in the right situations. But I loved Divine Image back in legion when it was baseline and I would like to have it back as a more accesible talent in DF instead of competeing with another talent I really like to use.
And pls get rid of Afterlife, useless talent in most if not all situations.
Divine Word is miles ahead of Divine Image. It resets your Holy Words and you can drop a sanctuary healing pool, get a big single target healing buff, or buff your damage.
Divine Image in comparison is so RNG it can proc 3 times in a row or not at all for 5 minutes. It would be entirely possible to do a raid boss fight and only have it trigger once. All while you get a consistent divine word every minute.
Wow, that blue post was needlessly combative, with every sentence translating to, “We see what you’re saying about , but other classes have too much utility so priests need to not have utility.” Nothing about the post made much sense. It seems to assume a world where priests are mandatory for all content and other classes will graciously shore up priest weaknesses without friction or complaint.
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Divine Image is okay, mathematically - if you just look at raw healing.
The problem is that it’s random, so raw healing doesn’t tell the whole story. You can proc it when everyone’s healthy, and you can proc it when everyone’s in trouble. The former is going to give you no healing, the latter makes it great.
On top of that, the proc change was nerfed from 33% in SL. That’s pretty bad. It would be better if it read ‘every 3 holy words summon a naaru’ instead. But even then its use case would be a little weird.
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It was super fun when it did proc. You could basically do like 50% more damage. Having it be an active ability on a cd would do better.
It’d be fine as a non-bottom talent though. Just don’t know where to put it.
From a flavor standpoint: removing Shadow Mend is really weird.
I’m elated that they’re taking steps to improve the Holy damage side of things, but removing the Shadow healing side of things at the same time feels like a step backwards just to a different group of players.
Shadow isn’t really a major interest of mine but Shadow Mend feels like one of the most defining spells we’ve ever had; it matches its accompanying lore well, and has a neat graphic. It’s felt like a good button to push in multiple incarnations.
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I’m interested to see how the Mind Spike change affects what is used as a filler.
Looking at Mind Flay and Mind Spike separately without considering talent interactions, Mind Spike appears to be the winner since it does more damage per second and provides the same insanity per second as Mind Flay. When considering talent interactions, it may be possible that Mind Flay will be much more useful as a filler since it interacts with more abilities and talents to boost their damage and insanity generation potential. In comparison, Mind Spike interacts with fewer abilities and talents.
At best, the ability that becomes the better filler will depend on your build. I hope that is the case upon release. The next best case would be that one is only slightly better for all builds. I wouldn’t mind sacrificing some damage if the play style of the weaker filler is more fun.
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so i have some thought on some of the new talents many Coalescing Shadows or shadow orb has some issues because it buffs both mind blast and mind spike. Frist there are to many able that buffs both of them in some sort of way you have surge of darkness for mind spike and both mind melt and insidious ire for mind blast this cause issue with the rotation having alot of buffs that all do the same thing and because it a proc i end up holding on case and not using my other proc I thing instead of it buffing both mind spike and mind blast have it buff devouring plague and mind sear ,this will do two thing , one it will help with balancing since there won’t be as many multipliers affecting MB and MS and two it will help smooth out the rotation since now we can built up stack of orbs more easily since we don’t cast devouring plague and mind sear as much and there isn’t that many talent that buff both of those ability.
Taking DoT removal away from hardcasted spikes was a mistake.
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I don’t feel like it is. But I do feel like mind spike should proc obs rather than consume them.
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that is also a good idea as well and yes taking the DOT removal part from hard casting mindspike was a mistake.
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i don’t think its a mistake.
I think the mistake here lies in being lazy with designing.
Bringing past kits that are entirely different from each iteration of SP and trying to make it fit with minimal design changes is a mistake in it itself.
Shadow spec in it itself is already like its own class. Super segregated of what made priest, priest.
Voidform took it up another notch. Further, bring shadowing into a whole other world.
Just bringing in the past iteration with minimal changes will never conclude into a cohesive design.
As it stands, Shadowspec reminds me of all 3 warlock spec inside of one spec.
When you go into the shaman tree, everything flows and fits way better in comparison to shadow spec’s tree.
The tree itself can allow you to build into a more Lava burst build, frost build into lava burst, or lighting bolt build. Either way, you go, everything feels apart of the spec and class.
Shadow is a different story.
The spender spells are neglected entirely, feeling more like a burden and chore.
The old design, void form, is potentially becoming more overshadowed.
Mindspike itself is trying to take over too much while making other path choices obsolete.
And the pet build feels like a forced unnecessary pathway put in there.
It just feels everywhere and forced.
and that’s just the spec tree.
Class tree did however got better in including shadow more into the tree, but its still far from done. Too much stuff that does not benefit the spec at all.
ive been saying it from the begining. Figure out what shadow spec should be and build around it. Fix and finish designing this spec for once.
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I’ll get back to you after a tuning pass but currently, this is not the case.
Mindspike has its uses if you take it and yes it locks you out of certain other talents but it is by no means overshadowing other options.
The pathing putting it near the top of the talent tree when the alternative playstyles are near the bottom does a lot to make it feel mandatory but it’s not.