Feedback: Oracle in The War Within

Classes Priest
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So after some more thoughts on my ideas in my earlier post found here…

I want to spend a bit more time in exploring and explaining the new direction I am suggesting to handle this “Future Prediction” theme in the form of Premonition for Oracle Priest but more from a conceptual angle with numbers left out as I want to Focus on the idea and not the balance.

I included a TL:DR at bottom if you want to get to the core idea being stripped of names and numbers and ignore the build up and explanation as to WHY and HOW I arrived at that method of delivery when it comes to the Premonition buff.

Goals (Avoid/Remove)

  • Avoid Button bloat by adding extra buttons.
  • Remove the random buff component from Premonition.
  • Remove the social stress of picking the correct target.
  • Remove the bland, dull, boring flat number enhancement of the buff.

Goals (Strive towards/Add)

  • Know the buff that will be applied beforehand.
    • Have set buffs aligned with specific spells that already exist for Holy/Discipline.
  • Buffs target your group/area.
    • Specific spells that already exist should be AOE spells.
  • Buffs have game changing applications.

Priest Class AOE Spells

  • Holy Nova
  • Divine Star
  • Halo
  • Mass Dispel

Holy AOE Spells

  • Holy Word: Sanctify
  • Prayer of Healing
  • Circle of Healing
  • Divine Hymm
  • Symbol of Hope
  • Holy Word: Salvation
  • Lightwell

Discipline AOE Spells

  • Power Word: Radiance
  • Luminous Barrier/Power Word: Barrier

So among the list of AOE spells listed above, my pick for suitable spells to incorporate the premonition buff effect are very limited when you take in several factors…

  • Easily accessible (Not a choice talent with a passive or single target spell or deep within the tree)
  • Not spammable (has limited use)
  • Has target amount limitation to keep an interesting buff without it being raid wide and overpowered.

This leads my picks for the best suitable spells to be the following…

  • Mass Dispel
  • Holy Word: Sanctify
  • Divine Hymm
  • Symbol of Hope
  • Power Word: Radiance
  • Luminous Barrier/Power Word: Barrier

Then I categorized these spells into 3 different choices that will have 1 of 3 premonition spell buffs attached to them.

Category #1 (Utility): Mass Dispel (Both Holy and Discipline has access to it)
Category #2 (Healing): Holy Word: Sanctify (Holy) & Power Word: Radiance (Discipline)
Category #3 (Major Cooldown): Divine Hymm (OR) Symbol of Hope (Holy) & Luminous Barrier/Power Word: Barrier (Discipline)

With Mass Dispel, it currently has limited use as it is only used to remove buffs/debuffs. So I went the route to add talents that can insert healing into Mass Dispel and since it has a lengthy cooldown (2 minutes now) then it cant be spammable but I also wanted to add in the capability to reduce its cooldown by normal gameplay that already exists with other AOE spells within both Holy and Discipline trees.

Example to reduce cooldown of Mass Dispel…

  • Your Purify now heals the target for 10% of the total damaged prevented and reduces the cooldown of Mass Dispel by 15 seconds.
    • This means each time you use Purify, you reduce the cooldown of Mass Dispel. This makes Mass Dispel have a lot more uptime for only Holy and Discipline. This is a step to push Oracle to being the best dispeller in the game to make up for things lost like not having an interrupt.

So now we have our spells and they are split into 3 separate categories.

Now we have to figure out what types of buffs are interesting and gameplay changing.

Aside from just blasting haste and mimic Bloodlust, I went the route to add other gameplay changing buffs that benefit all class/specs while remaining unique and interesting.

  • Reduce spell and ability resource cost (Reduce Mana/energy/Focus/Chi/Rage/Mana/Runic Power/Insanity/Maelstrom etc.)
  • Reduce spell and ability cooldown (This can be for ALL spells and abilities or could be only Minor or Major cooldowns)
    • The cooldown reduction already exists with Symbol of Hope. So its not a far stretch to extend this to be more prevalent as a premonition buff.
  • Secondary stats add MORE power. This is a good all around buff that if you have Haste breakpoints or Critical strike ability interaction or Mastery just adding raw power, it helps all classes.

So with all this taken into consideration, now the last step it to figure out how to “trigger” your spells to grant this premonition buff. That is when I think a charge system should be added and you build charges based on your common used spell.

To achieve this, I take Prayer of Mending from Holy and Power Word: Shield from Discipline and make those build up charges.

I went the route to combine them into a single spell that replaces both, but it adds a bit of Healing/Absorb to each spell that both would use and upon use, it has an automatic trigger effect to apply an Absorb if its a heal or a Heal if its an absorb.

TL;DR section…

Finally, I take everything and structure it into a new version of Premonition as you can see below…

  • Premonition (Stripped numbers and names to focus on core mechanic only)
    • [Holy Word: Sanctify][Power Word: Radiance] grants allies with spells and abilities cost less resources for duration.
    • [Divine Hymm][Power Word: Barrier/Luminous Barrier] grants allies with spells and abilities cooldown faster for duration.
    • Mass Dispel grants allies with spells and abilities receive more power from your secondary stats for duration.

Note:

  • I am thinking EITHER each time you use the spells that grant a premonition buff, it simply grants it. OR have your rotational spells in Prayer of Mending and Power Word: Shield (or the merged version) to add a premonition fragment type buff like “Visions of the Future” and when you get X quantity, you gain a charge of Premonition and Premonition can stack at base 1 and have talents that increase the stacking.
  • Symbol of Hope could be a better spell vs Divine Hymm or they BOTH could work.
  • The cooldown mechanic are spells that affect “raids size” while the others only affect up to 5 people. So this helps maintain balance from abusing on having it on all raid members at all times since the activation is a major cooldown spell itself.
  • Then the Clairvoyant Capstone Talent can have a chance to make your next Premonition apply all 3 buffs which having all 3 buffs would REALLY impact the players affected and feel amazing.

Closing:

I am curious if you have a better idea for a “buff” that Oracle Priest should grant people or if you simply do NOT want manage buffs at all even if its incorporated into your normal spell use.

Also, do you want to keep the Power Infusion the way it works now with it granting Haste and with the Twins affect? Or would you want it removed outright?

I personally dislike the Power Infusion and its twins interaction outright mainly because its NOT a group buff and I don’t want to manage it by chasing a single target and it changing all the time. This is why I think group based buffs is a much better route to take.

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My feedback is that I hate it. I couldn’t possibly be less excited for these talents.

How about we get some aoe healing like every other healer has? We have like a bunch of useless spells. Why not make one of them useable?

Prayer of healing is trash and has been forever, Circle of healing is also complete garbage, Sanctify is still insanely weak and too small of a circle. Divine hymn is beyond useless as well in m+. It’s a pretty boring button to push in raid too, not that I really care about raiding. I only raid if it’s necessary for a piece of gear.

Could we at least get Trail of Light buffed back to what it was at 35% instead of 25%?

Where is priest mobility at? Why does every new class zoom around and priests are so slow. Feather sucks and is really slow. We should be absolute tanks for how crappy our mobility is. Some classes get one or the other and priests get neither.

6 Likes
246

Well I can understand your frustration, however I think it seems a bit misaligned or misplaced.

It’s no secret that I have issues with current Shadow as do many others. Issues that I don’t think can be fixed with a Hero Path talent system outright.

But it seems your listed grievances fall into a similar category in that the specs of Priest have issues at a base level that should be resolved.

From what I see from the other Hero Path talent trees, they are building on top of what exists in the current talent trees which means they are adding more and not so much “fixing” what is problematic.

So I can agree that things like tankiness and/or mobility needs to be addressed but I don’t think the Hero Path system is meant for that.

I mean if we think about this a bit, if they actually fixed the current issues with the Priest specs within the Hero Path system WITHOUT adding more new features, I am sure that will have just as much backlash as you will be compared to all the other class/specs that have new things to bring to the table and then Priest is just not as bad as before?

So it is with that in mind I am focusing my feedback mainly on the Oracle Priest and what they are attempting to do.

But your right, it doesn’t matter how much they polish a turd, its still a turd lol. Which means I can only hope that they will revisit the base Priest talent trees and make some much needed adjustments, adjustments that either don’t require much tinkering with the Hero Path system or preferably they make the adjustments prior to creating the Hero Path Talent Tree System for Priest.

In some sense, I want them to work on the Priest Hero Path talents last and use knowledge of what worked and what felt good from the process of creating other class Hero Path Talents. But I would also worry they would run out of time if they did so and once again we are half designed and rushed out the door. But if they design Priest Hero Path Talents first, then they will have very little experience in knowing what is working and liked vs what is trash and a disaster as we can see with Oracle lol. So I guess a happy middle of the road is what would be best to give both a good initial design and time for feedback and changes as needed.

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they should leave Power infusion alone its only going to make a mess if they change it to anything other than haste.

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Someone said upthread that the devs expect the priest to be in the right place at the right time at all times. :man_shrugging:

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the fact it gives haste is the reason why its so hated within the community. it giving a flat damage boost would do wonders for everyone involved so its easily calculatable

1 Like
250

Even if it gave flat damage; getting nerfed for getting or giving PI sucks.

251

Just some raw ideas i was playing around with that is targeting Archon, but figured I would share here and maybe expand on it at a future date.

Archon

Dot/Hot

  • Psionic Word: Disintegrate
    [Holy: Replaces Renew][Shadow: Replaces Shadow Word: Pain]
    A word of pure energy that heals your ally or damages your enemy over 15 sec.
    Your Psionic Blast causes each target affected by Psionic Word: Disintegrate to burst the healing and damage done to every target within 5 yrds.

Direct damage/healing

  • Psionic Blast
    [Holy: Replaces Holy Fire][Shadow: Replaces Mind Blast]
    Blasts the target with Psionic Energy that heals your ally or damages your enemy and causing additional healing and damage to the target for 50% of the remaining amount of Psionic Word: Disintegrate.

  • Psionic Word: Onslaught
    [Replaces Shadow Word: Death]
    A word of pure energy that inflicts damage to your target. If your target is not killed by Psionic Word: Onslaught, you take backlash damage equal to 8% of your maximum health.
    [Damage increased by 250% to targets below 50% health.]
    [Damage increased by 150% to targets below 20% health.]
    Psionic Word: Onslaught deals its full damage regardless of the enemies current health while they are within your Psionic Storm.

  • Psionic Spark
    Your Psionic Blast and Psionic Word: Onslaught conjure Sparks of Power for every target afflicted with Psionic Word: Disintegrate and float towards them, dealing healing to allies and damage to enemies upon impact.

AOE

  • Psionic Storm
    [Holy: Replaces Holy Word: Sanctify][Shadow: Replaces Shadow Crash]
    Place a Psionic Storm at a targeted location for 10 seconds.
    20% of all your Psionic healing and damage done is replicated and reversed causing your damage done to heal your allies and your healing done to damage your enemies.

  • Psionic Escalation
    Psionic Storm lasts an additional 5 seconds and deals 20% increasingly more damage and healing every 1 second to targets remaining in the storm.
    (Choice)

  • Psionic Entanglement
    Afflict or refresh targets with Psionic Word: Disintegrate when they are healed or damaged from Psionic Storm.

Utility

  • Psychic Shield
    When Psionic Word: Onslaught deals damage, that damage is combined and converged into a shield on you that absorbs incoming damage for 6 seconds.

  • Purifying Storm
    Your Dispel Magic dispels 1 beneficial magic effect from all enemies caught within your Psionic Storm.
    (Choice)

  • Purifying Power
    Your Dispel Magic dispels 1 additional beneficial magic effect when the target is afflicted with Psionic Word: Disintegrate.

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Question for theorycrafters. Which is the better option 10% magic damge or 12% haste? I am assuming haste as the extra resource generation and GCDs/Spell casts are worth more in most cases than a flat 10% damage buff.

253

Thats not a one answer fits all question. It will depend and vary based on context and variables; during hero? On major CDs? On minor CDs? Is the timing (including the mini game) allowing full usage of the buffs? What about target count? On what spec? Etc etc.

This is the kind of question theory crafters and sims would have to answer if this hero talent tree makes it to live. A 10-12s buff doesn’t cover the opening windows for some specs, and the timing of the ability I mentioned is between 1 gcd to like 5-6 seconds variation based on the mini game.

254

Thanks, this makes me think that the meta knowledge required by Premonition will be a nightmare reliant on external sources and there being no way for an average player to properly make informed choices in game.

3 Likes
255

Been playing StarCraft lately? :stuck_out_tongue:

256

Used to years ago. Not so much these days.
I’m a Zerg player at heart though.

But as I’ve already alluded to in my earlier posts, you can see a lot of uncanny similarities between the Archon from StarCraft and Shadow Priest.

Beyond the graphics as I already shared the resemblances, but also the fact that we have all these “mental” or “Mind” type spells alongside the “Psychic” aspect with things like “Psychic Link” and so one can only guess the direction the wow devs will take the “Archon” path in but I think it would be pretty cool to explore the Psychic or Psionic Connection as when you look up Ancient Oracle things online, you can see themes and verbiage that is found in the current Oracle Tree while when you look up Ancient Archon themes and verbiage, there is very little things to go on aside from the title itself which is basically the penultimate ruler of a group.

So I figured why not just lean in and go fully into the Psionic route and take the Psychic Link connection between dots and single target spells and share that aspect with Holy.

Again, it’s just one interpretation. I am curious what they are going to develop themselves but if any bit helps then I’ll do my part and if nothing else, I can at least say I tried and will have no regrets regardless what we end up with.

I just don’t want to be left with the feeling of “If only I just shared what I thought” if we end up having a disastrous talent tree.

1 Like
257

Nothing wrong with tossing ideas around, but I feel like they’re going to do things like:

  • shadowfiend now grants 5% leech to you and 4 nearby allies while active

  • halo or divine star add renew or shadow word pain to targets hit (maybe that’s op?)

  • shadow word death grants a charge of surge of light or whatever the name of the shadow talent that makes mind blast insta cast

  • casting shadow word pain casts renew on a nearby ally or casting renew casts shadow word pain on a nearby enemy

  • you can now cast damaging spells while in spirit of redemption, or you can now cast helpful spells while in dispersion

Some ideas I was thinking of this morning

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I want to iterate on my original comments and feelings on this. In a vacuum, I have nothing against PI or Premonition. The problem is that with premonition you’re expected to juggle these mini-PI’s WHILE avoiding 100 swirlies on the ground and other complex mechanics, + you have to do your regular rotation which, since you’ve made haste reduce GCD, is faster and more difficult than ever before. Premonition in classic would be fine, but in retail there’s already too much cognitive overload.

1 Like
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Thrymyrden you’re selling me on the new skill being great!

But seriously to Blizzard, you can see all the ideas being thrown out are pretty wild and extravagant, making something like this work could be difficult. It might be best to just go back to the chalkboard and start from scratch on a new idea. And if you do this, try to incorporate more skills that can and will be used by both, other than a couple talent points the trees feel almost fully segregated (i.e. they mostly read if you’re holy priest receive x and discipline receive y) which imo kind of defeats the purpose of this tree.

3 Likes
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Additional thoughts about Oracle;

Stated goal of the hero talents what’s to make them ‘what you are, but more’

So is PI and it’s variation considered to be healing priest core? Rhetorical question that one, I am disappointed that this is the message Oracle sends.

5 Likes
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It’s considered priest core, not just healing priest. Everything about PI is consistent with priest design. Think about it:

  • It’s a spell that we’re intended to cast to an individual ally, like PWS, Angelic Feather, and Leap of Faith. This is a consistent theme in priest design that is almost entirely absent in other classes except paladin. Other classes that cast spells on allies tend to affect the group.
  • Blizzard begrudgingly tolerates that we cast PWS and use Angelic Feather on ourselves, but refused to give us Vault of Heavens because we’d always pick it and wanted us to sacrifice our legendary in Shadowlands to encourage giving PI to other players.
  • PI has warped balance horrendously since it was reintroduced, but Blizzard is so invested in it that they decided to work harder balancing the game, even reworking demo and unholy, and nerfing PI by ~60% to keep PI castable on allies rather than simply making it a personal buff.

Blizzard invites negative sentiment and makes more work for themselves by keeping PI as it is, so they’re clearly invested in PI as the conceptual core of priest design, which is to say that priest is the class that everybody should want in their party because they export their fun to their friends.

And that’s a fine idea - I’m all for it if they make it fun to play that way. As it stands, the best case scenario is that we get zero feedback in-game for how effective exporting our fun is to make it fun for us, we actively harm ourselves to help allies if we give them feathers, or, in the worst case scenario, Blizzard designs fights that we have no solution for and must rely on an ally saving us with a better version of our signature ability. An ability so core to priest design that every single priest would swap it out if given the option for Vault of Heavens instead.

2 Likes
262

premonition is designed VERY awkwardly.

first of all there doesn’t need to be two different 10% damage buffs, insight or glory (one for physical damage and one for spell damage).

just combine both of these into one single “10% damage” buff.

in fact, I would be willing to wager that you could combine all 3 of the buffs into one single super buff and it still would be perfectly balanced as an ability.

there would still be meaningful choices and gameplay:
do you want to save it for the main tank to help them stay alive? or put it on a dps at a critical moment to help them pump damage?

1 Like
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Biggest problem with a simple 10% bonus dps buff would be that it would be vastly better for disc to get the bonus via twins. Holy wouldn’t get nearly as much out of it.