So in my recent experience with Shadowlands content in the pursuit of acquiring cosmetics, I’ve been playing the Path of Ascension content a bit and I would like to point out some things I noticed and found interesting.
In the Path of Ascension content, you can pick your soulbinds to take control like a vehicle and fight in an arena with. Among these soulbinds you will find that Kleia is rather interesting.
Kleia has an ability to jump into combat similar to a Warriors Heroic Leap yet it’s using the Leap of Faith icon… Assuming you use her wings to fly and land at the targeted location.
She also has an super powered up state with cool visuals that goes by the name Archons Gift.
Kleia specializes in melee combat, not afraid to face her challenges toe to toe. As an ascended Kyrian, she is able to leap great distances with her wings and channel the Archon’s Gift to greatly empower her attacks.
I find it both odd and interesting that you can have this Angelic 🪽 being able to have these cool features that us Priests lack completely.
Because that Archons Gift gives me more of a feeling of being an Archon than just some Halos expanding and contracting does
I would like to think that if Door of Shadows not being added because it doesn’t fit the theme of lets say Holy because it’s too “Shadowy” themed then surely we should be able to sprout wings and fly and land in our chosen area as that will fit priest just as much as Angelic Feather and Leap of Faith with its feathered wings visual.
To add to this, I also took notice of the Valkyrie that shows up that was sent by Odyn during the story and there is a moment where a Kyrian and a Valkyrie meet and are intrigued by each other and the similarities they share and want to discuss further at a later date.
Also it’s kind of on the nose that these Afterlife Angelic beings just happen to belong to the group known as Kyrian… kyrian / Valkyrie… Val-Kyrie Val-Kyrian… Just seems like it’s very related and intentionally so at that.
So since paladins take on the Templar holy warrior archetype, seems like with all the wings and feathers that is already present in Priest should very much include some borrowing of archetype from Angels and Valkyries as those aesthetics are very much already hinted at.
I say this because what seems to be happening to me at least is that blizzard has a massive lack of vision and direction to take priest in and of the attempts to take this direction in and base our spells and toolkit around have continually seems to only work and fit for single spec and since Holy and Shadow are so diametrically opposed, seems like going hard into Angelic and Valkyries will present ample grounds to base abilities around and make sense for our toolkit. Because just simply giving priests an ability like Heroic Leap makes no sense… But add in the context that you sprout wings and fly into the air and then heck maybe float for a few seconds before you either slowing decend back towards to ground or you can choose to leap to a location like with an extra action button appearing for you while you hovering above the ground.
I just really think we are missing a central theme that works for all 3 specs to focus on that makes sense without making any spec feel like it’s a forced theme. But with the Angelic and Valkyrie angle, I think that could become fresh grounds of ideas to be explore and build around and will actually grant us the desperate toolkit we are lacking while also cleaning up our redundant spells still littered about.
Because I can’t stand that I need to take both Angelic Feather and Body and Soul to have the best movement possible because both are subpar alone and we lack any other option of movement like displacement abilities.