If you need 1M HPS to get through a boss, it does not matter if Voidweaver can do 2M.
Similarly, if your tank needs 15M health to survive a hit, and they’ve got 8.5M, it does not matter if Voidweaver has great HPS in its bender window. Oracle can mitigate that hit and Voidweaver cannot.
This is generally how high level M+ has panned out over time. If your HPS is good enough to pass the check, but you mitigate more, then you’re generally a better spec for M+.
The question isn’t ‘does voidweaver do more HPS in its windows??’ as I said before - I think everyone agrees that it does. The question is what the class needs outside of those windows. In my limited testing of +10s, Oracle COULD pass the test before it was buffed. I wouldn’t have recommended it to someone pugging because VW is just a way smoother playstyle, but it was absolutely doable. Oracle has only seen buffs since, and is likely to see even more.
It’s also just very flexible in mitigating damage and spot healing where VW doesn’t feel that way. So it comes down to final tuning.
Another thing that should not be ignored is the overall damage aspect. Since oracle is a combination of two healing specializations, you shouldn’t expect a lot of damage potential here.
The Voidweaver’s Entropic Rift, on the other hand, is still the strongest damage spell available to us. Not only does it cause a lot of group damage over its duration, but it also culminates in a powerful explosion at the end.
In this context, I would like to briefly take up the practiced use of Entropic Rift. It has turned out that it makes sense to let the rift collapse in a controlled manner in order to force the explosion at the end. This can be achieved with the following macro:
Enemies often die before the rift collapses and the explosion fizzles out into nothingness. Controlled blasting of the rift prevents this. You don’t even have to try to hit as many enemies as possible with it. As the damage from the explosion is divided between the targets hit, it is sufficient to hit only the last enemy to inflict the full damage.
The controlled explosion can also be used as an ace up your sleeve. Before allies die on the next tick of group damage, we close the rift manually and thus generate a considerable amount of healing from Atonement.
Because the macro is not an ability, the rift can be closed while the spell is being cast. It would therefore be practical to start one last Void Blast and press the macro while casting the spell.
As a Voidweaver, you choose the Weal and Woe talent. As an oracle, you prefer Twilight Equilibrium.
With Weal and Woe, you can generate extremely strong shields in some cases and can thus intercept individual damage spikes on the tank.
We are talking about +60% (6 Penance bolts) and +45% (4 set bonus) and +15% mastery. The shields absorb around 2 million damage here, which is absolutely impressive. And we collect these buffs passively.
Right, and the oracle build I was talking about also takes WaW and AoW, and consistently drops 3-4m damage shields in my testing, and can rapture for enormous amounts. But it also comes with a 10% stronger Pain supp, Solace and isn’t bound to penance bolts, or prone to eating them with a Smite.
Oracle absolutely mitigates better than VW does. That shouldn’t be a question any more than which does more healing in bender windows. And again, I’m expecting more oracle buffs.
I don’t think we’re at final tuning yet for either classes or dungeons.
Strictly speaking this is true… And if we assume that the healing is by no means the “bottleneck” or what limits your ability to clear the content you are trying to do then sure.
This is the reason why generally you can play whatever build you want for easier content or content you overgear, but at least in my experience in M+ healers are not nearly as powerful to reach that status when trying to push content close to your skill-level.
So HPS and healing potential absolutely matter, A LOT!.. Mistweaver for example was finally meta in M+ for S3, didn’t get any more utility than it had or damage reduction, it wasn’t even a melee DPS meta where Mystic touch could get a lot of value… The reson MW was meta was simply becasue it did waay more healing than everyone else, and because of that groups were able to push higher… Same thing for Preservation Evoker in S1 it just did 30% more healing than everyone else.
You can’t really argue a healer that one build doing let’s say 70% of another one is competitive, it’s simply not… Could you play it in easy content? sure… But it would not be considered a viable build.
This is half-true. MW wasn’t really meta as much as druid was. But even if we discount that, a good part of the reason neither healing priest was viable is because Spriest was meta.
M+ meta is oft determined by taking the ‘best spec’ of the best classes available. Balance/Guardian druid can be 100% perfectly viable in the tank/DPS slots for 30+ keys, but they’re not going to make it into meta groups if Resto druid is slightly better. Or it might even be that you NEED a balance druid in this meta, so resto and guardian are off the table, etc, etc.
Also it’s HIGHLY dependent on final tuning anyway. By the same measure we can talk about MW or Druid HPS being so great, this is following 4 seasons of Shadowlands where healer meta was mostly determined by the DPS they brought, not the healing.
And where do you get the talent points for this? You have to give up Mindbender or Harsh Discipline for that. And that’s inconceivable, because then you can give up the whole playstyle with Mindbender and you won’t be able to heal any group damage.
Yes in the end it will come down to how actual tunning lands… All I’m saying is that I’ve done a lot of testing and I simply disagree that we are there yet with Oracle and Voidweaver.
If they continue to buff Oracle then sure at some point it could become a competitive choice, it’s just not there yet. In fact I think it would be better to nerf Voidweaver, particularly on the trait that makes Voidblast do extra 100% atonement healing, and then buff the base values of everyhing a little bit.
Harsh discipline is by no means a necessary talent since its rework. It’s decent, but as a 2 pointer, you’re not losing as much strength as you’d think by removing vs getting DA and AoW (ESPECIALLY after the PW:S buffs that made AoW more attractive). A good chunk of its power was the mana reduction in S1/2. The actual healing that 2 penance bolts gives you is not actually that high even in the scov window. Also the only talent that tracks penance bolts anymore outside WaW is Heaven’s Wrath for uppies, and insight allows for 4x cast of penance anyway.
Hah, Priest is already struggling just overall. No chance healing priest is viable next to Pally/Shaman right now, so I wouldn’t be advocating for nerfs to hit priest hero talents yet. Unless we’re getting baseline spell buffs next to it, that is.
Yeah I mean I think the healing we do during our burst windows with voidweaver is fine but they could nerf the strength of our Mindblast windows and buff the base healing to even it out… It’s just too wide of a gap still.
The changes for shadow priest are such a joke. They took a lot of time to re-work shadow prior to shadowlands, made a class that was great in the first season of shadowlands and then continuously nerfed/changed it to the ground. It only saw light recently and that is specific to M+. The class is now barley performing any damage and their way of fixing it is through nerfing the leading single hero talent. And despite the “3% to all damage” given to shadow priest, the class sees an overall nerf. Like seriously. I get that balancing can be difficult and can take a long time, but the expansion is 3 weeks out, the class is performing significantly less than most classes and the recent build gives it nerfs. It’s not even a point of asking for shadow to be amazingly performing, just make it competitive enough so we can actually get a chance to get into a raid. Buff single-target and dots, and step away from the joke of an effort to balance out hero talents. Your missing the whole point of developing a class. You got so caught up with your hero talents that you become so out of touch in making classes competitive. I can tell you what all raid comps look like right now and if you were actually seriously about raid diversity then that wouldn’t be the case. Get a grip and fix balancing or you will see a polarity in the next expansion that will push so many people away.
I haven’t been able to test anything due to the beta not working for weeks and also my time schedule. I am going to be playing next expansion though after some thought so I will update my opinions upon release.
I’m thinking I’ll play Holy in raid and Disc in M+.
This is the feedback forum for Oracle Priest, Shadow can’t be Oracle so you’ve posted in the wrong forum. Might be worth posting in the correct one if you want this to be looked at.
I mainly PvP and I’m a huge fan of the big shield builds as I think that is always what Disc has been renowened for and am actually feeling a bit hopeful about how Oracle is looking (outside of the flat restriction on Premonition) with the massive shields. I don’t think I would be changing much in terms of playstyle to what we have now other than managing premonition tbh. I think I will be aiming for something like this as a build: HERE
I am by no means a pro so wondering what you think of this?
So just taking my feedback post on how to give Priests an interrupt and posting it here…
I think the main reason healers don’t have an interrupt is because Mind Control exists and that can act as an interrupt in PvP where having both Mind Control and a separate spell interrupt can cause some major PvP balance issues.
So one suggestion…
Make Dominate Mind useable on players in that it interrupts them only.
This makes it so you can’t use Mind Control in PvP but you get an interrupt.
But then the issue is now PvE doesn’t change which is what is needed.
So then maybe make it so if you can’t Dominate Mind a target because it’s “Boss” level and is “Immune” then it will act as an Interrupt instead.
The only issue then would be to interrupt a non “Boss” level mob but I think that’s fine as it shouldn’t be a deterrent in solo content because the mob shouldn’t be that deadly and in groups, other classes get the interrupt.
But this would in effect make it so it doesn’t unbalance PvP while also granting Priests a way to handle big threats such as bosses solo.
Dominate Mind
Controls a mind up to 1 level above yours for 30 sec while still controlling your own mind. Does not work versus Demonic, Mechanical, or Undead beings. On Players or targets Immune to Mind Control, this will instead interrupt the casting of a spell. This spell shares diminishing returns with other disorienting effects. 30 second cooldown.
Making it work for Lore reasons…
Maybe rename it to Whispering Thoughts as you are telling the target to stop casting the spell since you are unable to take control of their mind completely, best you can do is manipulate them briefly to stop casting for a bit.
Also, a side bonus would being able to always interrupt a Demonic, Mechanical or Undead target as they are permanently immune to Mind Control.
Even Holy Paladins - who got a revamp - aren’t even happy because Blizzard last minute removed a popular talent without any warning and dropped heavy hps nerfs.
The reason the communication is so bad is because the alpha/beta for TWW was the shortest in recent history. From start to finish its only a total of just over 4 months from alpha to expansion launch compared to DF, SL, and BFA being 6-7 months.
As a returning player, this really makes me hesitant to invest into the new expansion. Going by the responses here, I am starting to think they should delay the release by a month or two due to the hero talent issues.
PS:
I should also note that I’m surprised by the lack of updates to the class after all these years, particularly holy priest.
Unless we’re getting baseline spell buffs next to it, that is.