Tongue in cheek… but… steal the holy ability back in the day of refreshing renew… Shadowmend refreshes renew duration
I know that any of the current pick one nodes are only two options but I REALLY would have liked to see one at the end of the priest tree with four options where you could only pick one and they were the four different covenant abilities. Different ones have different uses and it would be useful switching it up based on the content that you were doing. I’m really not loving that the only one they kept was mind games.
I also feel that there are a few talents that could have been consolidated such as cosmic ripple and piety of mana - that is 4 points (although I’m not sure that cosmic ripple is supposed to be 2 or if that was an error when it got posted), either way it would have been nicer to have them combined and cost two.
1 Like
The worst thing about the current build is that you have to lose damage to get core defensive abilities. Why not move all those utility talents over to the Priest tree and swap with all the shadow damage picks. As it is I’m not picking silence, dispersion, psychic horror or vampiric embrace in favour of picking more damage talents.
The shadow tree overall is a mess, things linked that have no gameplay connection at all while more logical connections are on the other side of the tree (or even the base priest tree instead).
Shadowflame prism should not be a 100% lock for the spec (by being alone on the base priest tree it certainly is). SFP for me at least is a massive pain to play with, you overcap insanity and can’t do anything else during the shadowfiend duration, on live it’s actually better to keep void bolt on cd just to spam mb’s and sw:d’s more. SFP should be somewhere on the bottom left of the shadow tree.
Just delete StM already, if it somehow is viable it will just get nerfed again.
Void Torrent seems a little outdated, especially if SFP is going to be a permanent feature it just seems out of place (the damage is also pretty lackluster), maybe change the cd to 45sec and combine it’s effects with Damnation + increase the damage of the channel. It would make it a great opener cast again, because at the moment I’m not sure it beats out getting the SFP rotation going earlier.
There’s just way too much crap in the last tier of the tree, with the idol’s being obvious things to want to go for, you aren’t even left enough points to get halfway to the other side. I feel like you should be able to get the powerful talent and then explore towards the other side a bit (but obviously not have enough to get both sides powerful options). In the 3rd tier pretty much all of the talents other than the idols look god awful, either boring or not powerful.
Reworking the trees:
All non damaging abilities (self shields, silence, dispersion, vampiric embrace…etc) should be on the base priest tree, while all shadow damage talents should be on the Shadow tree.
Shadow Tree
First tier should be about aoe choice, move psychic link and shadow crash up here. Void Eruption should be the last talent to link to the next tier.
Second Tier left side could be more based on apparations and shadowfiend, the shadowfiend talents should go where shadowcrash is. The middle is about mind blast, shadow word: death and void bolt. Right side should be more dots and channel based.
Third tier should continue the trend from the second. The idols need changing around with Yogg-Saron swapped for N’zoth. SFP should lead into the left idol, Void Torrent leads into the right and Mindgames the bottom center.
Base Tree
Removing all the mandatory shadow damage picks opens up the tree for some interesting choices, I won’t go through every tier but Dispersion and Vamp Embrace should be the final options at the bottom right rows.
Overall this looks like a very very early draft and I’m at least glad its out there early to get this kind of feedback because it definitely needs it.
3 Likes
I’m actually happy to see damage talents in the priest tree. Healers need those. I look forward to SFP as disc.
I’d be more interrested to remove healing habilities from the priest tree and have holy dmg or self buffs that even a shadow priest might want to pick… Right now the left side has a bit of both but is more focussed on healing. Which makes it less interresting for both shadow and disc in my book.
2 Likes
Actually this one seem awesome considered you can mixt it with Twist of faith to boost its healing even more.
Also it give an additionnal Holy word for Holy to proc Resonant word. If it would also proc Cosmic ripple and Divine word now it would make it even nicer tough.
But overall the healing you can do is insane to save a tank from dying Just by using Holy Word Life + Serenity.
I think it would also be nice if Disc had a Talent to turn Pw:S into AoE shield so it would fix the Atonement problem a bit. Cause the main issue is Radiance the only AoE Atonement proc they have and its 60% its duration. What disc Need is a regulard AoE atonement proc and a duration buff like the old PvP talent. Not a 2 sec or a 6sec every 3min
1 Like
Here’s my feedback of the Holy Priest Tree:
Top Rows:
- Heal - The first pick… and honestly my question here is how is it going to work this coming expansion? The problem with Heal is that without Flash Concentration reducing its cast time and giving it a massive healing buff… nobody uses it. It’s cast time is too slow as HPS matters more than HPM.
- Prayer of Healing - This ability has been dead all of Shadowlands simply due to its massive HPM cost and lower HPS compared to Flash Concentration Heal. Also, there’s really not enough talents that prop it up like Heal and Flash Heal. Surge of Light offering free PoH casts would probably help a bit.
- Really nothing to point out. It’s mainly filler as you pick your baseline class abilities.
Middle Rows:
- I like that you can take Benediction as well as Divine Star/Halo.
- Halo - I’m hoping this ability gets a buff because it’s cooldown is too long and it doesn’t do a lot of healing. Divine Star is a 15s cooldown and does more overall healing as long as you heal 6-8 targets with it. Divine Star is also pretty much a mandatory pick for M+ because it does a lot of damage and also heals your group for free.
- Binding Heal - Why…? Nobody will take this talent. Change it to Binding Heals like on retail.
- Surge of Light - Have it give free Prayer of Healing casts as well.
- Prayer Circle - This gets to my PoH question on the top row.
- Holy Conductor - This just sounds broken on paper. You can basically get a 20% chance to trigger Surge of Light which will be almost non-stop in a raid environment with Benediction floating around. It’ll also give you a strong reason to keep Renew up on the tanks to fish for free procs.
- Divine Hymn & Symbol of Hope = I don’t like that these are talents you need to pick. If you want to go a damage oriented build for M+ than you can’t take Divine Hymn. Also, Symbol of Hope is pretty much mandatory Priest raid utility… I’m in the mindset that raid and M+ critical class abilities shouldn’t be “optional” talents.
- Cosmic Ripple should be 1 point not 2.
Bottom Rows:
- Piety of Mana seems a tad bit overkill on-top of all the other mana gains you can get from the general priest tree. You can get +10% mana return from enlightment, shadowfiend/mindbender mana return, 10% mana back from targets dying with SWP, mana from Symbol of Hope, and now an extra 9-12% mana a minute from Piety.
I really do not like just stuffing healers with tons of passive + active mana gains because the scenario of healers eventually reaching infinite mana may become in reach. Mana costs would have to be massively increased for healing abilities and/or the raid encounters would have to batter the raid hard.
This basically punishes any Priest player for not stacking 3-4 different mana gain abilities. It’s just a bad design imho.
- Gales of Song - Is this an extra +2/4% bonus on-top of Divine Hymns current 4% bonus or does Divine Hymn simply not provide the bonus unless you take this talent? An extra +40% healing bonus to the group is just… yeah.
- Rune of Healing, Rune of Mending, and Rune of Fire should probably be it’s own combined talent that branches off of Light of the Naaru. Apotheosis can then branch off the Rune talent.
- Lightwell - Nobody except Manbeard was asking for this ability to come back and just from reading the description… it looks incredibly weak. It only heals targets below 50% health and cannot be moved after its placed. I would never take this talent.
- Divine Words - I’m curious what the bonuses will be. I do think 15s is too short though to make it interesting.
- Burning Vehemence - Is this cast time / cooldown reduction on-top of the current ability? If so nothing really to complain about.
- Searing Light - I’d like to see Mastery provide an actual bonus to healers damage like with tanks. Right now Holy Priests are punished for stacking high amounts of mastery… Also, a +30% Holy Nova buff against one target with Holy Fire just doesn’t makes sense… but it would with my suggestion below…
- Empyreal Blaze sounds incredibly overpowered in PvP. You can open up with a Holy Fire + use ability + smash them for 3 more Holy Fires? You and your 2s partner can probably nuke somebody in a single chastise stun. Personally I’d rather see this ability make Holy Fire apply its DoT to all targets around it each time you cast. You can then probably Holy Nova and if its actually buffed it might do decent amount of damage.
Either way…
Final Thoughts:
- I struggle to make a raid heal build that is able to pick up all the same abilities that we are able to get currently. It doesn’t seem like an overall improvement because I’m forced to put points in filler talents just to move down the tree. If you want Resonant Words you can’t take Runes… if you want Runes you can’t take Resonant Words. It’s hard to squeeze in points for Lightwell or even Divine Words without having to give up on something else. Holy for raid will end up having to focus more on getting faster Holy Word Salvation resets. You pretty much can’t take things like Shining Force because you need those points further down the tree. Talents on the bottom like Gales Song are pretty much mandatory picks for Holy if you’re using Divine Hymn in a raid.
Example on what I mean:
If Cosmic Ripple + Piety of Mana were 1 point each and the Rune talents were merged than you could save 3 points that you can slot into things like lolwell (if you wanted it) and Resonant Words.
- I don’t like Divine Hymn & Symbol of Hope being talent picks because if you want to focus on a damage oriented playstyle you really can’t take Divine Hymn.
- Top and middle rows seem fairly well laid out. No real major complaints.
- Bottom row needs the most work. Please don’t give us Lightwell.
- Button bloat is going to get a bit extreme. It’s entirely possible to add 3-4 new buttons to your hotbar than currently between the two trees.
- Overall question is how much of a nerf are H Priests going to get in the healing & damage department with the loss of Boon of the Ascended and Flash Concentration.
4 Likes
Dear Blizz,
Thank you for returning to us something that has been missing from Priest for a very long time. The meme spec.
Behold, Holy DPS Build:
3 Likes
Yes.
It’s baseline ability for Shadow spec.
1 Like
Jaks new video… made a case for speccing out of rapture… so doing away with absorb disc totdally. Interesting ideas
I also noticed that unlike Druid or DK Priest class tree only get 1 free ability instead of 2 at lvl 10 except for Disc who get 2. Holy and Shadow only get 1.
2 Likes
This is probably viable in raids (Rapture’s really not amazing there without CoM), it’s definitely not in M+ though. Didn’t watch the video, but I’m assuming it’s raid focused? Because Rapture’s way too important a tool for small group.
No was raid and mythic plus focused for both disc and holy. A playstyle without rapture would be scarey but he does make interesting. A disc key build he had going down the holy side.
He also theorised that mind sear will be added to the disc tree
My thought is mind sear will be added where purify is currently, OR another spell is being crafted for its spot.
Either way, I don’t think it’ll ever be viable to M+ without Rapture. Can make do without Barrier/Lenience a lot of the time, but rapture is such a good cooldown there that it doesn’t make sense to not take it.
I’ll probably look and see what he said later.
2 Likes
Yeah thats his thought too. I didnt like half his choices but i think that the beauty of these trees, so much variation we hopefully wont have cookie cutter specs, but thinking people will create their own
I sure hope it’s mindsear too. I would be surprised that holy nova becomes good enough, otherwise we’ll be relying for SFP and divine star for aoe… might still be enough though…
I really hope they gonna improve on Disc playstyle a bit even change its dynamic a bit.
Would be kinda cool to have a similar version of Balance druid for Disc Priest. Like you fight between Holy spell and then shadow spell in rotation to keep the harmony. Kinda similar to th new Shadow Covenant effect.
But I also think it would requiere some change in term of their mastery and Atonement. Disc really need a mass Atonement applier more than just Radiance. Maybe even a mass Pw:S cooldown.
I would remove Binding Heal for Light of Naaru so you can spam more Chastise
I feel we can get close to balance druid with inner light and shadow. I’d rather not make it too complicated otherwise… disc is already considered the hardest healer and a lot of people considere it bad because they’ve had bad experience with bad disc priest in their group.
On the other hand, I disagree for mass atonement as this is where the spec becomes op in raid while it struggles in other types of contents. Adding masse attonement would give more opportunities for ramps and entire raid coverage.
In the current new tree, we get spirit shell again. While a lot of people hate it, without clarity of mind, it’s likely not going to be able to cover the whole raid. It could become a decent option still without being broken like it was in 9.0.
If it’s easy to get atonement on everyone, you also have more time to heal outside your ramps and more mana as well. The whole toolkit would have to be nerfed down to compensate and you’d have something unviable outside of raids…
1 major issue:
Why should holy priests be massively limited in their trees in regards to straight healing? I mean, seriously, 2/3rds of the tree is damage and the healing talents were just garbo SL ones.
Honestly, blizz just made everything about damage and copy/pasted into the healing part. Its like healers only received half a tree.
Ugh.
3 Likes
Not sure where this would fit in or if it would even be a good addition, but what if the removed PvP Talent, Premonition, came back as a talent on this talent tree?
Little refresher for those who don’t remember:
Premonition: Heals nearby targets within 30 yards for (55% of Spell power), and applies Atonement to yourself.
Deals ( X ) Shadow damage to yourself for each Atonement you have active, and increases their duration by 3 sec. 12 second cooldown.