Feedback: Oracle in The War Within

Classes Priest
183

I have no where near enough experience to comment on this set up in an informed manner, but it seems super problematic. First, as many have noted, designing a system that requires add-ons to use at all is bad design. I want to speak to the broader design philosophy behind this tree. I think the many, MANY specific issues have been pointed out already.
First, there is a fine line when designing a system between rewarding good play and punishing less then optimal play. At first glance, this seems like something that would overtly punish mistakes and less than almost perfect game play. While the buffs at first may seem insignificant, when piled up they could make a significant difference. As such, any priest who misses premonition proc, doesnā€™t have the most updated weakauras or whatever will be utterly eviscerated. Now, you canā€™t design toxicity out of the player base, but you could, you know, recognize it and not lean into design decisions that will encourage it. Once again, this is a problem that wonā€™t affect a vocal minority of players, so it will be dismissed under the ā€œgitgudā€ discourse.
Second, while the devs said they wanted to focus on the theme of oracle, they screwed up. This design reads like someone had an idea for a cool mechanic and then shoehorned everything else torturing the idea of an ā€œoracleā€ on top of it. I would suggest the design look at the design philosophies of other companies, like Paizo, in how they integrate mechanics and theme. The oracle, as a theme opens up the space for innovative changes that help the priest support other playstyles. Even though I am on the verge of casting summon Aneurysm with this post, my suggestion would be as follows:

  1. Consolidate and simplify the support aspects to one side of the tree. As many have suggested the splitting of damage buffs is generally bad and increases the micro-managing.
  2. On the other side of the tree, focus on the offensive aspect of the oracle theme: interrupts, kicks, and reflections! Add something like curse of tongues to slow the enemy, reflective heals/shields to punish the enemies bad choices, instant rezzes while under the effects of renew if you are killed, capping damage taken from attacks as you lock in the future.
2 Likes
184

I have arrived!
looks left and right
Awkwardā€¦
Disperses away back into the shadows

5 Likes
185

I should point out that unlike talent trees you will eventually get all the nodes. Think dragon riding tree not talent tree.

186

You might want to edit your post into paragraphs. A single wall of text can be hard to read. :slight_smile:

187

How many paragraphs should anyone really need to say ā€œnuke this hero talent treeā€ and/ or ā€œmake PI a priest personal only again or nuke itā€ and / or ā€œDo not triple down on stuff the community doesnā€™t like to begin withā€

5 Likes
188

Guild leader, HoF, M+ title point of view:

Iā€™m totally on board with support stuff, and having a give and take between healing throughput and buffing teammates. That part doesnā€™t bother me at all. Iā€™m a game 1 main, anti parse-culture, all that stuff. Augmentation evokers are cool.

Iā€™m actually genuinely excited by the idea of the option to reduce my own throughput to make the team do more. Healers do that all the time in all forms of high level content, including emphasis on healer damage in raid and M+. Thatā€™s all fine.

The parts of this that suck are the randomness and the fiddliness of the game play. The aspect of playing a dps-support mini-role that feels good is coordinating with a friend and buffing them when they need it, when theyā€™re in cooldowns or when a big pull is going on. If instead Iā€™m sitting there waiting for my thing to cycle into the correct buff, that sucks, and seems really annoying to play, even if itā€™s powerful. Add even more randomness on top of that with the final node - this just seems really unfun even for players like myself who actually enjoy support roles.

On top of all that, it seems like thereā€™s no potential for a big win here. Based purely on tooltips, Iā€™m not convinced any of this stuff is better than baseline Power Infusion. So itā€™ll have to be tuned so that it is, but then itā€™s going to be even less fun than the already much maligned ability (which again, Iā€™m totally cool with, personally). The less fun part is the cycling, the RNG, and the fiddliness of playing around all the little bonuses.

I like the additional support aspect. Please remove the cycling buff type stuff. You can do things that are more in the form of ā€œAllies affected by your Renew or Atonement have an additional 1% hasteā€ or whatever.

Again, support based hero talents = super cool (imo)
THESE talents = not cool because of annoying/fiddly game play and rng

5 Likes
189

On the topic of Power Infusion granting a Haste buff that affect how a class/spec feels and plays vs just a damage enhancement or healing received supposedly being the superior option as that requires the prerequisite of Power Infusion and then replacing it outright, I think no matter what that this new replacement spell should be VASTLY superior.

So after giving it some thought, I was trying to recall a moment in time aside from Bloodlust that you really felt good from an outside buff.

This took me back to Black Wing Lair in Classic with the Vaelastrasz the corrupt encounter and the Burning Adrenaline mechanic.

  • Burning Adrenaline
    Damage done increased by 100%.
    Spells cast are all instant.
    Reduces max health by 5% every second.
    Deals 4376 to 5624 damage to surrounding allies on death

So in taking this mechanic for inspiration, what if Premonition did something like thisā€¦

Premonition
Replaces Power Infusion
1 minute cooldown.

Divine the future, and gain access to a spell that gives you an advantage against your fate.

  • Burning Adrenaline: Your spells and abilities are now instant cast and cost 50% less resources for 10 seconds.

OR (adding the kiss/curse effect if itā€™s too powerful)

  • Burning Adrenaline: Your spells and abilities are now instant cast and cost 50% less resources and you suffer 5% damage every second for 10 seconds.

OR if we must have multiple options, then each option should at least be interesting.

  • Burning Adrenaline: Your spells and abilities cost 50% less resources and you suffer 5% damage every second for 10 seconds.

  • Euphoric Power: Your spells and abilities cooldown 50% faster and your max health is reduced 5%, stacking every second for 10 seconds.

  • Divine Ingenuity: Your spells and abilities receive 50% more power from your secondary stats and you receive 5% less healing, stacking every second for 10 seconds.

Then to update these talents to work a bit better for my more interesting ideasā€¦

  • Divine Providence: Increases the duration of Premonitions spell effects by 50%.
    (Choice)
  • Fatebender: Premonitionā€™s effect is increased by 50% if the divined spell is different than the previous Premonition.

Still the issue remains on picking the correct target which is also a problematic and annoying and frustrating experience.

Instead, should be a talent choice to either add all premonition effects at a low chance OR it becomes group wide buff at a reduced effectivenessā€¦

  • Clairvoyance: Premonition has a low chance to grant all the effects of Premonition.
    (Choice)
  • Precognition: Grants your party the Premonition effect at 50% effectiveness

This new capstone talent will be a choice between your target and yourself to have a chance for all premonition effects OR at a 50% reduced effectiveness but spread to your whole party.

Now what this essentially does is both grant the Oracle priest a way to really amplify its own capabilities (low chance for triple buffs) OR share them with more people (party = Oracle Priest + 4 others) at a reduced effectiveness.

Either case, the curse effect is something the Oracle healer can handle fine solo or in group setting.

This leans into the kiss/curse or high risk for high reward style of play but in a fun yet manageable level.

Also to clarify, the curse effect that each premonition comes with would stack if you have multiple premonition effects and with the case of Fatebender increasing the effectiveness of the premonition, this would also increase the curse effect.

So you would really be taking a chance going up against fate when you stack all 3 premonitions at additional effectiveness.

In choosing Divine Providence, the duration would be 15 seconds which would make the curse effects extra nasty and with all 3 stacking, you could have suffered 75% total damage, 75% less max HP and healing received is reduced by 75%.

So with taking damage, reduced max health and reduced healing received at 5% each for 10 seconds leading to 50% at the last second (75% with Fatebender effect) will definitely put some fire under everyone which I think justifies the massive amount the buff gives you.

So perhaps the kiss/curse numbers need to be adjusted. But I wanted to breakdown how punitive the curse effects could end up being when they reach the full duration in order to preemptively justify the high number of the kiss effects.

You truly are tempting fate which I think is a great way to really bring forth this Oracle theme of a talent tree and gameplay experience.

Tl:dr

  • Option #1
    Low chance for triple Premonition effects for you and your target. High risk of death due to curse effects at end of duration (50-75% + chance to multiply curse effects by 3 if you have all 3 Premonition effects) but extremely high potential from kiss effects.

  • Option #2
    Default party wide Premonition effect at 50% effectiveness. Moderate risk of death as the curse effects are also reduced by 50%. So at max you would be at 25-37.5% of a single curse effect and you are unable to have more than 1 from a single Oracle Priest.

Some more clean upā€¦

Since I made the capstone a Choice node, then I submit to remove the choice of Perfect Vision. That is just plan and dull and keeps the rest of the talent tree in line with 4 choice nodes.

  • Perfect Vision (Remove)
    Reduces the cooldown of Premonition by 10 sec.
    (Choice)
  • Versatile Divinations
    Premonition can now trigger the Brilliance and Urgency effects.
    • Brilliance: Restores 5% of your targetā€™s maximum mana.
    • Urgency: Increases your targetā€™s Haste by 12% for 10 sec.

Lastly, with this version of the premonition effects I have put forth, I think it would be best to take Premonition back to a 2 minute cooldown.

With the chance to add a charge from Grand Reveal, I think that would more than enough provide increased opportunities without it seemingly like itā€™s constantly being used and thus the power needs to be reduced to reflect its uptime.
It should be like a nice bit of oomph and not mandatory.

  • Grand Reveal
    When your Power Word: Shield is fully absorbed or your Prayer of Mending heals, gain a stack of Grand Reveal. At 150 stacks, gain an additional charge of Premonition.
1 Like
190

I do want to give a general shout out for the priest community here. As unpopular as these changes are, the vast majority of the posts have been constructive, and people are making a genuine attempt to offer specific actionable comments rather than blanket ā€œthis sucks and I hate it.ā€

Yā€™all make me feel proud of us.

4 Likes
191

I enjoy playing my Evoker.

Maybe not the most fun of all my toons, but still good.

Please remember that your keyboard includes the letters to for ā€œYMMV.ā€

Thanks.

192

I am extremely disappointed with War Within so far

I main Hpal and Hpriest. I also play disc. 3k io plus on both toons 5/9 mythic raid for reference

The lightsmith build for hpal is extremely disappointing for numerous reasons. And now many of the same flaws are impacting the other class I am most invested in.

For sake of brevity Ill sum it up in a few points.

  1. Balancing / building a spec around external buffs is terrible. Im not going to rehash most of what the more competitive community feels about augvoker. This Frankenstein concept seems to be spreading

  2. The actual mechanics involved with this require additional micro managing and are mechanically clunky. This is seriously not fun

  3. This looks extremely powerful to the point where you are going to have to run it to be competitive. So you will be locked into it to a certain extent to operate at a high level

If it isnā€™t that impactful there is no point in doing it

  1. I donā€™t see what feels ā€œheroicā€ or "exciting " about your new big class focus not providing sonething that is more focused on your own performance or game play loop

  2. Just to reiterate, this is going to be annoying and not fun to play

At this point Im considering moving to a different game

5 Likes
193

Both the concept and implementation of Premonition seems half-baked.

If we can get behind the concept of applying semi random buffs to your group there are still several problems.
Starting with the fantasy of Premonition, the idea is to ā€œdivine the futureā€ and shape it to your benefit. The future is constantly changing, however the way Premonition is implemented you always get the same 3 choices, only in a different order, so you can literally always get the same, best one - the only difference being that sometimes you have to wait 1 global to ā€œmanifest that outcomeā€ and sometimes you have to wait up to 3 globals. That is uninspired and also doesnā€™t work well for gameplay where often you need to use your abilities at the exact right global to get the proper value out of them, anything else is not ā€œexcitingā€ it is only frustrating.

I propose the following changes, keeping the core concept intact:

  1. There need to be more than 3 possible outcomes from which you can choose a select few.
  2. The future is always changing, so should the choices you can make.
  3. The choice needs to be actionable immediately, not with a random delay

How this could be implemented:

  1. There are 5 different buffs (up from 3)
  2. At any given moment you have 3 of those 5 buffs available to choose from, these 3 rotate every 10 seconds on a timer.
  3. When using Premonition you get an empowered cast bar similar to the evoker empowered abilities, level 1 uses buff 1, level 2 buff 2, level 3 buff 3.

As a result, you would be able to track the current 3 ā€œcardsā€ that you have available to play at any given moment and you are able to see how long you have remaining until the cards get ā€œshuffledā€ again (you are divining new future outcomes if you will). When you press the button you get to predictably execute one of the 3 actions within the empowerment duration (similar to how it works for Evokerā€™s Fire Breath).

194

Oracle

Canā€™t say I like it.

When we saw the cinematic for the battle for Lordaeron we didnā€™t see Anduin PI buff some random mage and a warlock every min after consulting a spreadsheet. No, we saw what the power of the light had on a healer. Allowing Anduin, the power to turn the tide of battle. This is what I felt a discipline and holy mix would look like for a hero class.

A cycling buff every sec seems problematic for me, sometimes my ISP is a pain I would hate to hit the wrong button due to latency. Also, how will this work for players with visual problems? How will these buffs help pet class? Are these buffs better than just normal PI? What happens if I miss click and give the wrong buff to someone?

Preemptive Care, adding 3 sec on renew seems meh. I donā€™t often cast renew. If I have a renew going it is mostly due to a proc from prayer of mending. Will these 3 secs for renew be added to the time of that proc or do I need to hard cast it.

Divine feathers, it has been said priest have poor mobility. I cannot risk my limited speed boost to maybe help someone else.

Prompt deliverance, I donā€™t know about this either this will be too strong or not useful this will depend on dungeons and raids either way I think this will somehow get hot fixed later if it is stronger depending on the season.

Foreseen Circumstances: Adding 2 sec on Guardian spirt feels real weak vs 10% more damage reduction on pain suppression. Maybe adding a DR on Guardian spirt as well would make things better.

Versatile Divinations 2 more options on the premonitions, the mana one I feel will hardly ever be chosen. I canā€™t think of a time I would have need such a niche use for mana regen for someone else especially when I can use symbol of hope.

The capstones random proc for Premonition which is strong, but since it can trigger at a non-optimal time it is a not that interesting. Considering you are casting premonitions every 50/60 sec I feel this will be the norm not the exception.

My question is this if this tree goes live how much time do you expect players to spend buffing and not healing. Between fishing for a buff, casting that buff once every 50/60 sec, do you think holy and discipline will be able to keep people alive during progression while we play the buff mini game? As things stand now the only things holy has that would keep people alive during these situations (renew, Prayer of Mending, shield, guarding spirt, and maybe lightwell) and I feel that they are too weak or impractical to keep the party alive when things going off the rails.

That my two cents.

3 Likes
195

This sounds like even more work to be honest.

3 Likes
196

Sorry that sounds even more aggravating to deal with

Its like roll the bones for priest

1 Like
197

So I just watched these Videos.

Some interesting and cool ideas are found in here.

Zuco - Oracle Priest Hero Path Talent reviewā€¦

Hero - Oracle Priest Hero Path Talent Redesign breakdownā€¦

I will write out the ideas in the video belowā€¦

  • Prayer of Divination (Keystyone)
    [Replaces Power Word: Shield]
    [Replaces Prayer of Mending]
    10% base mana
    40 yard range
    10 second cooldown (Reduced by Haste)
    Instant

    • Apply a shield, 5 stacks of Prayer of Divination and (Discipline only) apply atonement to the target for 15 seconds. While under the effects of Rapture, Prayer of Divination has no cooldown.
    • Prayer of Divination: Shield a target when they receive damage, then consume a stack of Prayer of Divination and bounce to a nearby friendly target. Prayer of Divination triggerā€™s Echo of Light and behaves as if the target were effected by Atonement.

  • Mend the Past
    When you take damage, cast Prayer of Divination on yourself. Can only occur once every minute.

  • Awareness
    Whenever you dispel a harmful magic effect from a friendly target, reset the cooldown of Dispel Magic. Can only occur once every minute.
    (Choice)

  • Purity of Soul
    Whenever you dispel a harmful magic effect from a friendly target, you also cast Prayer of Divination on them.

  • Righteous Hope
    Every 15 casts (10 for Holy) of Smite, Holy Fire, Renew, or Heal also casts Prayer of Divination on a friendly target within 40 yards (prefers targets with no stacks of Prayer of Divination)

  • Time of Need
    When Mend the Past activates, your next Flash Heal grants the target 10% Haste for 10 seconds.

  • Time of Relief
    Mass Dispel is instant cast and its cooldown is reduced by 15 seconds.
    Whenever you cast Mass Dispel, reset the cooldown of Prayer of Divination.

  • Time of Life
    Power word: Life also shield the target for 25% of the amount healed.
    (Choice)

  • Time of Death
    Shadow Word: Death can now be cast on friendly targets and marks any target below 35% health with Fateā€™s Due for 10 seconds. If a friendly target dies while affected by fateā€™s Due, instead restore them to 10% life.
    A target may only gain Fateā€™s Due once every 3 minutes.

  • Prophetic Word: Wrath
    10% base mana
    40 yard range
    2 minute cooldown)
    Instant
    Proclaim a prophetic word against an enemy target, applying a debuff for 6 seconds. This debuff absorbs all damage, unleashing it upon the target when the debuff expires, increased by 3% (or 5% if critical strike id your highest secondary stat).
    A target can only be affected by 1 Prophetic Word: Wrath debuff at a time.

  • Sonorous Voice
    Holy: Divine Hymm also reduces damage taken by each target it heals by 3% for 5 seconds.
    Discipline: Power Word: Barrier/Luminous Barrier applies 1 stack of Prayer of Divination to each target affected by it.
    (Choice)

  • Unending Praise
    Divine Hymm, Power Word: Barrier/Luminous Barrier also dispel 1 harmful magic effect from any ally affected by it.

  • Diligent Plea
    When you gain a charge of Holy Word: Serenity, Holy word: Sanctify, Penance, Power Word: Radiance, or Prayer of Divination, your new Renew cast will increase your targetā€™s Mastery by 2% for 10 seconds, stacking up to 10 times.

  • Fate Scribe (Capstone)
    15% base mana
    40 yard range
    5 minute cooldown
    Channeled
    Channel a divine symbol onto the ground over 2 seconds. Friendly players who touch the symbol receive the Sealed Fate buff for 3 seconds. Cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds each time you cast Prayer of Divination, any Holy Word or Renew.
    Sealed Fate: When this buff expires, heal the target for 15% of all damage taken while under the effects of Sealed Fate and gain 1 stack of Prayer of Divination.

My thoughtsā€¦

I see some interesting ideas in this. But I also see some things that just donā€™t fit well in my opinion.

But figured I would share it here for anyone interested and you can post your thoughts or gleam ideas yourself.

1 Like
198

Just a terrible idea. Why would we trade PI for a worse buff thatā€™s more annoying to use and think thatā€™s a BONUS? Iā€™d rather just have PI. Which feels good to press. A rotating buff is one of the worst ideas Iā€™ve ever heard. Watching an icon shuffle through options for 5 seconds while Iā€™m also healing sounds awful. The rng of clairvoyance sounds awful. Please note that replacing all the buffs with a boring main stat buff would ALSO be bad. This current implementation seems like the worst possible implementation. But Iā€™m also against any attempt to move priest more into a support/buffing role. The only node with any redeeming value is getting a free PoM when casting a shield for disc. But I would hate PoM actually being part of the disc rotation. Everything else needs to be completely scraped. Start again from scratch.
Again, do not try some backup plan with a different version of premonition. GET RID OF THIS ENTIRE CONCEPT OF MODIFYING PI.

2 Likes
199

I donā€™t have an issue with the ā€˜seeing/anticipating the futureā€™ flavor, I think thatā€™s great and well worth investigating. Iā€™m not as sold on a modified PI being at the heart of it.

The described mechanics of Premonition donā€™t sit well with me. If the initially chosen buff is entirely random, then by default itā€™s a 1 in 3 chance to get the ā€˜correctā€™ buff when you cast it, and in the event that you miss you have to wait 1-2 seconds for the right one to cycle in while healing. Itā€™s worse with Versatile Divinations - 1 in 5, waiting up to 4 seconds if you miss. If itā€™s not random and thereā€™s some kind of logic to it (ex. if you cast it on a caster DPS itā€™ll always start on the magic damage), itā€™s just not very exciting since itā€™s probably always correct to use the first one but you still have to take a moment to confirm.

Either way itā€™s not something Iā€™d find particularly fun. That delay between the initial cast and the button press to actually trigger the correct buff is going to be, at the least, irritating every single time. I realize Iā€™m saying this as an Evoker who deals with Empower spells on the regular, but at least there I know how long Iā€™m waiting each time.

200

Yeah I agree with ya. I think the issue is that Priest are not built around that concept so any external will come at a cost for their own output and utility and not in a fun way (healing priest still dont have a Brez for example, and Shadow + PI externalā€¦ just no)

What I agree with is that support stuff definitely can be fun and good, but not when its just patched up like that unto a class.

201

The idea of the spells cycling around and the player needing to stop the wheel on the one they want is frankly awful. It will undoubtedly lead to frustration.

If it cycles too fast players will accidentally select the wrong one, if it cycles too slow it will be annoying as the player waits for it to go to the spell they want.

Even if a happy medium speed of cycling is found, the concept is still bad. Buffing spells like PI, season pally blessings, and now premonition are strongest when paired with a DPS cooldown that lines up with their cooldown. Even if the cycling only adds like 1 - 3 seconds of misalignment with a 1 or 2 min DPS CD, it will still then lose value

All of these issues would then only get compounded more with the final point in the tree adding 2 more buffs.

It would be so much better if we instead always had access to every different spell of premonition and they all shared a cooldown much like Blessing of Protection and Blessing of Spellwarding for prot pallies.

Will this be a lot of extra buttons to deal with? yes. But most healer players already use mouse over macros, clique, or other addons to assist with button mapping and quick spell casts on allies, so this wouldnā€™t be that big of an issue, but will fully eliminate complications from the frankly silly idea of the spells rotating.

202

I agree, especially for holy this is such a thematic miss, holy has always (in theory) had the theme of most versatile healer with a tool for every healing situation. Nothing in the history of holy has ever suggested preemption and prediction and buffing allies. Even holy having PI is a relatively new occurrence in the history of priests.

4 Likes