We don’t even have to get into theoreticals of what an archon should mean in WoW. I know we all subconsciously repressed all memories of Shadowlands, but the Archon was the leader of the Kyrians of Bastion. You know, the faction of literal angels whose entire aesthetic was “All Divine, All the Time.”
So yeah. It’s really, really weird that Archon is paired with Shadow.
i honestly wouldn’t mind if they called the hero talent tree “potato”
the main issue is the lack luster effort in the design of this class every year.
And what about the Forsworn?
Are they not like the other side of coin of the Kyrian Angels? Just like you have Holy and the opposite of that is Shadow?
You have Naaru / Dark Naaru as well.
No matter how you try to look at it, Holy and Shadow are diametrically opposing forces. So I ask you, between Oracle and Archon, which matches the most in terms of opposing forces and examples we have seen in and out of game the most?
We see opposing forces with Forsworn. I can’t think of a “dark” Oracle and if the best example is to just say “Voidlords” then I ask you… why have a 3rd Hero Path named Voidweaver?
Seems everything Void themed related to shadow would fall into the Voidweaver Path and the other “dark” aspect of Shadow would fall under Archon because it has to go somewhere and with Dark Naaru and Forsworn alone, that makes it a perfect fit.
The only question then becomes what is the “hook” that bridges the gap between those diametrically opposing forces?
That is when I insert the “Mental” or “Psychic” or “Psionic” aspect as it would be foolish to totally discount the fact that StarCraft was made and in control of blizzard and I can see if only a hopes of a chance some connection between mental powers that Priest has access to “Mind Spells” and “Psychic Spells” that both holy and Shadow share or did share in the past and could share again with the Archon Path.
This, the Potato spec is the problem, the name is not really relevant to this right now - changing the whole hero tree is.
Edit: I am not saying that no one should talk about the name, but they really just aren’t an issue is all 
no for sure i agree. that is what i am saying.
This design is a problem and generally the way they handle this class has been a problem for years now =/. AKA shadow spec for example.
Agreed. I am still stunned that with the amount they take in in monthly fees that each class does not have a specific dev.
The garbage called ‘premonition’, the design of which has absolutely nothing to do with foresight or planning, is what you get when there is no one at the helm. The class and spec trees for all of Priest need a serious cohesion pass and fun pass.
Looking at various boards/forums/threads it seems that about 70% think the entire oracle tree should be thrown in the dumpster(and about 25% of that think that whoever made it should also be thrown in), 25% think that it could be fixed by either making it group buff, or just replacing it with fae guardians. Less than 5% think this is ok as is.
Still I would not be surprised at all if they just pushed this hot garbage live.
Archon by definition is just a leader. I don’t think they’re trying to tie it thematically to any character’s personality that also carried that name.
In almost every TTRPG, they’re a divine/celestial being.
Most noticeably, we already have “Archon” in the game being associated with a “divine” being- Kyrestia, leader of the Kyrian. Her title is literally “The Archon.”
They have no connection to shadow priest since they were corrupted by the Jailer, but that wasn’t old god/void corruption like what spriest deals in.
U could easily apply this argument to disc because disc is using both light and shadow and would be more akin to the forsworn bearing elements of both than just simply “it must be holy/shadow but we won’t have anything theme-wise to link the two that would make sense with lore.”
I think your missing the point.
These Hero Paths are built to work for 2 specs.
That means 2 specs should find/have a common bridge to converge upon.
So if we already have a “Voidweaver” Hero Path spec, then it stands to reason that any Void theme would fall under that. Since Voidweaver is already set between Discipline and Shadow, then we can assume that the similarities between those two specs will lean on the Void theme and I would wager that the major point of connection in terms of spells and abilities would be Shadow fiend / Mindbender regardless if people like it or not.
So now we have to recognize that there has to be another side of Shadow that is not Void themed. Well shadow was an amalgamation of many aspects prior to legion when it only then really went hard into the Void / Old god direction.
So that is why you can look at other aspects that fit for shadow. Those aspects having a connection with Holy would be ideal since they are sharing Archon.
So if Holy is essentially the embodiment of the Holy / Light theme/cosmic power, then Shadow would be the opposite. That is why I used the Kyrian and Naaru examples as they both have this darkened state or “opposite” or “opposing” aspect to the more light side.
You have the angelic theme for Priest with wings and feather spells and abilities. Cataclysm introduced Archangel and Dark Archangel. Holy wings and Shadow wings.
Angels have wings and the Void theme seems pretty devoid of wings.
So…
Where do you place the Dark Wings theme? If it’s not Void related yet it can’t be Holy related… seems it fits best with a dark angel… fallen angel… theme. Forsworn fits this theme.
Regardless where powers come from really isn’t the point, it’s the themes and similarities.
If you can’t see that by this point then I don’t know what else to tell you.
Shadow has Dark Ascension now and Voidform. Those 2 spells alone should show a clear separation of themes and since Holy is VERY angelic themed and angelic is angel and wings, then Dark Ascension is just the opposite of that just like Forsworn is with Kyrian.
Priest is the punching bag of WoW’s class design. Everything designed for them seems to be for the benefit of other classes and not themselves. We really need a Priest class Developer.
You refused to give us reverse Life Grip this expansion citing “selfish usage over normal life grip” meanwhile we’re the worst mobility/maneuverability class in the game. To the point where we need evokers to piggy back us around the arena to meet mechanic checks, and Augmentation Evokers to spatial us.
Evokers Time Spiral resets the cooldown on grip and not angelic feather. So Priest is the only class who doesn’t get personal benefit from Time Spiral, yet again for the benefit of others.
Holy and Disc are the only specs in the entire game without an interrupt…for no reason at all.
Power Infusion is still an external and used for the benefit of other DPS, and not for the Disc/Holy Priest themselves. Also we’re the healer specs with the worst active mitigations, on top of having long casts times requiring long stationary periods.
So now you expect us to be even more of a slave for others. Lack of personal power aside, the design of this hero tree is atrocious. A 1 second flashing rotation of 5 buffs (3 of which are just garbage), requiring multiple presses to achieve more or less the same thing current PI does, is just the worst design I’ve ever seen in a MMO.
Most of the talents majorly favor 1 spec over the other. Foreseen Circumstances, 2 seconds extra on GS? How about giving it a damage reduction component.
Clairvoyance is the most RNG potentially broken thing designed in the game. It can fully change the outcome of Mythic+ runs and yet again, just seems poorly thought out like most of the tree. Grand reveal only benefits Holy. Waste No Time does nothing for Holy as Prayer of Healing and Heal are tuned poorly.
Preventative damage benefits Holy far more than Disc. PoM = 10%+ of holy’s healing vs PWS = sub 5% of discs.
This tree needs a complete remake. And consider shoring up some of our own design weaknesses, like the other hero tree’s have done for some other classes.
Is it going to take another hashtag, like the # no more voidform, to get actual change going.
Do we need the spam again.
I have a strong Premonition (nyuk nyuk nyuk) that such a measure might be the only thing that gets their attention.
I’d like to believe that these threads were opened to actually get feedback, and that this will be taken into consideration. Now to be clear, the feedback we type here is gathered by the forum mods or something, and passed on to the dev teams.
Wether the dev teams act or not… thats a completely different topic of course, but I do trust it reaches them.
I know that historically feedback given has not been acted upon much… so trust is still shaky. But hey, I am hopeful and want to believe they are headed in a better direction nowadays!
In short; rework PI into a personal, give healy priests a brez and an actual defensive ability, and do anything else that isnt remotely close to that Oracle tree 
(totally repeating stuff said a billion times already for emphasis)
They do have people that read all of it and pass what they feel is relevant back to the devs from what I understand.
They’ve honestly been doing a lot better since the end of SL and into dragonflight. Obviously lots to do still, but it’s been nice for a change.
We shall see I guess.
So not sure why it didn’t come to me before but my suggestions revolving around Archon and it being intimately tied to StarCrafts Archon connection also has an Oracle unit that inspiration can be drawn from for the Oracle Priest as well. .
Some abilities these Oracles have is the ability to see/detect enemies.
A couple versions of this are called…
And
So I was thinking about these Oracle ability names and what essentially they do and how that can fit in with the Oracle Priest in WoW.
Then I thought of Spectral Sight that Demon Hunters have to see stealth.
So…
What if Oracle Priests had a utility spell that granted a buff on you and Allie’s within x distance of you to see stealth or even something more along the terms of foretelling the future / having foresight.
For PvP it would be nice to have another class (even if it’s a specific subclass like Oracle) have the ability to see stealth.
The spell could literally be like a self buff that only affects priest or grants to your party or friendly targets within a distance from you for a limited duration.
Not unlike how we often casted Inner Fire on our self back in the day and have to refresh it often in PvP.
The theme of predicting the future in the form of seeing stealth and “knowing” when the opponent will strike fits with the Oracle fantasy.
Also, those are just very theme fitting names for talents/spells for an Oracle.
Maybe it could be an ability to replace Mind Vision and instead of it being a debuff where you can see through the player character, instead it becomes a buff on yourself to see stealth and invisibility.
Perhaps it can be a PvP ability that only Oracle Priest had access to.
Another potential spell idea for movement that I just thought of…
If you look at the Adept from StarCraft 2, you can see they have an ability called Psionic Transfer or called shade for short.
Be an interesting idea for a mobility spell for Priest in general or be Hero Path(s) specific.
Imagine you can cast this spell and you become a state like Netherwalk from Demon Hunters or Wraith Walk from Death Knights but you leave your body behind and become a ghost that can float/fly at an incredible fast speed but unable to cast spells.
So you leave your the body behind which can still be damaged and killed but you gain the ability to move really fast and maybe??? Can move in the Z axis. But that might be too broken.
Not ideal when compared to a displacement type of mobility but could be an interesting idea to explore.
I think of Sylvanas when she goes into Banshee form during the BFA intro cinematic in terms of aesthetics.
I would think you can put a cancelaura macro to end this Shade ability as needed and weave it into your spells so this becomes a very seamless experience while really leaning into the ghost/spirit theme… at least when it comes to Shadow Priest.
It’s very clear to me that this Hero Tree is loosely based on Astrologian from FFXIV, taking their tarot system as a new mechanic for “Oracles” in WoW.
So if we are really going down this path, I’d like to see our Premonitions act/behave exactly as the cards from that game: The buff obtained being RNG and not cycled like it was presented by the devs.
In fantasy, Oracles provide prophecies/divination according to the will of gods and not their own. In short, they cannot choose the future they divine and that should be reflected on the gameplay.
From a gameplay perspective, a rotating buff that an Oracle can select will lead to degenerate gameplay where players will push a meta to hyper focus a single buff to chosen players. Not only this escapes what an Oracle means, it also pushes the responsibility to the healer to constantly pick the right card, on top of already babysitting an external cooldown as it was with Power Infusion. Also it will create wrong answers: A player using other buffs than the DPS external will be labeled bad by the community even if Blizzard intends the other buffs to be used freely by the Priest.
Another problem that this will cause is that because buffs are now selectable and used only as a DPS external, it will in turn force Blizzard to balance the game as such, watering down all the buffs. Leaving it RNG leads to a situation where buffs can be stronger, even more than current Power Infusion, with the caveat of being RNG. (which imo is a good balance).
In its current iteration, Premonition has a very janky gameplay (3 key inputs for a single action) and will require WeakAuras for proper function, which is not something Blizzard should be pushing players towards. There are enough plates already for players to spin and adding another plate (buff selection) is just too much.
Please consider this feedback,
Thank you.
Excellent explanation, from someone who has to spin a lot of plates!
Honestly, whatever the devs do, they should take their idea, create a build for it, and go run some 20s with appropriate gear AND NO ADDONS, and see if it’s fun, or gets them killed. I will guarantee that after a couple of Everblooms, they will scrap this design.
As someone who does keys and raids, what I want is SIMPLE and SATISFYING. Support is fine, but don’t make us have more cognitive load that we do already. We will just farm it out to Weakauras and macros, and your concept will die, so that our groups can live.
Also, random thought, why does Oracle have a theme of seeing the future, but not have a focus on it?
Yes, this is my big problem with it as it sits currently.
Instead of a PI mini game, just have it modify Symbol to make any healing cooldown able to be cast regardless of its time remaining. Your deity said you can do this, it’s fine. Way more options for interaction, way more thematic, way more fun.
count me in the camp of people who thinks archon should be holy/disc theme.
and oracle should be holy/shadow.
the fact they are doing oracle as holy/disc and the clear and visible clues that this is all based on astrologian from FF14 just speaks to the lack of creativity being displayed by the modern crew of devs as well as their inability to think in the context of historical warcraft lore, without getting their minds polluted by outside influences.
They probably don’t want Oracle to be used by a Shadow Priest because of these supportive buffs that would cause a tremendous pita to balance Shadow Priest.
Shadow Priest is balanced around having self PI, now imagine having to feed yourself the correct buffs while doing your rotation. They can’t afford using the Hero Spec if causes a DPS loss than not having it.
What Blizzard seems to not understand is that doesn’t change when you give Oracle to Healers only. The opportunity cost is already there and if these buffs are weaker than PI people will simply ignore Oracle spec and move on.