Feedback: Priest Updates

In Development The War Within Alpha Test
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In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Priests in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

Thank You

Before we continue testing The War Within, we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who read and responded to the Hero Talent previews we posted over the last few months.

Looking to the Alpha

In this first Alpha build, every single class has at least one new Hero Talent tree available for testing, with the rest coming in the following weeks. We’re asking testers to initially keep several things in mind:

  • There are UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
  • Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI)
  • New spell visuals and audio for several new Hero Talent trees are still a work in progress. Many trees are using placeholder assets for now that will be updated over the course of Alpha.
  • There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

The combat design team has two big areas of focus right now that we are prioritizing over other concerns such as tuning or generic class updates/maintenance:

  • Finish building the remainder of the Hero Talent trees that are not yet available.
  • Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

With the Alpha build being playable and all of the discussion that will occur around the flood of data, we wanted to reiterate that the responses to our blog previews were highly valuable. The feedback we received allowed us to make some early improvements or revisions while we didn’t yet have a public test environment. It allowed us to take some big early swings on certain trees, and then react to early feedback quickly.

Going forward, we aren’t planning to publish any additional Hero Talent previews in blog form, since we’ll add the remaining classes to the Alpha as soon as they reach their ready-to-test state.

Working from Feedback

Several Hero Talent trees have received changes after reading feedback to the blog posts. Some of these were tuning changes to ensure that the Hero Talent tree felt competitive, while others were significant design changes. The feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.

Going into Alpha, we feel good about the shape of the Hero Talent tree designs. Keeping a consistent number of utility and defensives nodes across all trees, having parity between number of choice nodes, and the overall structure of the trees are things we’re confident in.

We’re also working on tweaking some core class designs as well. In some cases, it was necessary to make adjustments to the class or specialization talent trees before significant work was done on a Hero Talent tree. In other cases, we did work seeking to improve base class talent tree designs.

Alpha Feedback

Now that we’re in Alpha, we’re looking for feedback on how it feels to playtest these trees. We’re specifically curious about:

  • Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree.
  • Hero Talents that create frustrating or unsatisfying gameplay or rotations for your spec.
  • Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.

Throughput comparisons of Hero Talent trees are helpful, but we’re more interested in gameplay, feel, and choice feedback at this stage. Also, when possible, we appreciate it when you focus posts or articles on a single spec and Hero Talent tree, rather than combining feedback about multiple issues.

Again, Thank You

We greatly appreciate all your feedback on Hero Talent trees and are very excited for you to see everything else we’re working on. Thank you!

– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team

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Alpha Feedback - Voidweaver

The following feedback is from the perspective of a Shadow Priest.

You can find all current bugs for Priests in The War Within here.

Any bugs blocking testing?

Hero Talents that Create Frustrating or Unsatisfying gameplay

  • Current Entropic Rift window feels very busy and borderline overwhelming and you are rushing to try and get Void Blasts and Devouring Plagues out and do not have room to do much else. This is directly linked to feeling like we cannot quite “cap” the rift size or extension consistently. If that was fixed this might also be better to play with. There is some charm in having to chase the rotation here.

    • Currently Shadow also feels like it has to ramp to get meaningful damage out of the talent, the Void Torrent channel into then spawning the rift and then reaching peak 15 seconds later is a very long time in environments when things do not live that long.

  • Darkening Horizon feels very unachievable to get the full extension without Bloodlust, Power Infusion, and a lot of baseline haste while also getting lucky with procs. Not being able to max this except in rare cases is unsatisfying.

    • Reducing the cooldown of Void Blast, making it Instant Cast, working with other spells as well, and/or increasing how much extension you get per Void Blast would help
    • Changing it to a spammable spell like Discipline probably would not feel fun, as it would really hurt the value of non-filler spells during this window

  • Collapsing Void Devouring Plague expansion feels extremely underwhelming or even non-existent, even after casting 5 Devouring Plagues the size of the rift is still smaller than 8 yards, which is less than Shadow Crash and by then it fizzles away.

    • Make it work with Devouring Plague ticks and/or significantly increase how much it is increased by per cast
    • Fantasy element and visually this is extremely underwhelming

  • When a mob dies that was the original target of Entropic Rift, this can feel super unsatisfying, especially if it remains as a small size since it currently does not move or re-target.

    • Would be awesome if an enemy dies in the rift it also expands and “consumes” them

  • Entropic Rift not pulling enemies in feels unsatisfying. For a spell that closely resembles a black hole, I wish it acted more like it. The slow from No Escape is in a similar space but not nearly what I expected. In PvE the applications for the slow are quite underwhelming.

  • The choice node between No Escape and Dark Energy is unsatisfying. At the current size of the rift No Escape feels extremely underwhelming and likely will not have many use cases in PvE at the current size Shadow can get it to. In the current state it feels like Dark Energy will be preferred always.

    • Would love to see additions or changes to No Escape such as the black hole design mentioned above.
    • Adjusting the pacing/sizing that Shadow can get the rift to would certainly help No Escape.

  • The choice node between Devour Matter and Void Empowerment does not feel satisfying. Devour Matter is an extremely niche ability in almost all types of content, where it will only provide a small amount of value even if the condition is met. On the other hand Void Empowerment is always useful and consistent and provides value every 30 seconds with Malediction.

    • If we had this choice node on live, in current examples where we do face enemies with shields (Tindral, Fyrakk, Iridikron) that is such a small portion of the fight, Void Empowerment would still be the better choice.

  • Currently locks you into the bottom right side of our spec talent tree for this spec as Void Torrent, Malediction, and Idol of C’Thun all have such strong synergies. Could be frustrating when taking any Shadow Word: Death points in Voidweaver that also encourage spending points in the bottom left side of our spec tree.

  • In certain cases Shadow might be incentivized to cancel Void Torrent early just to get the rift to spawn sooner. This might just come down to tuning of Void Torrent though. Spawning at the start of the cast would have even more problems depending on tuning of Void Torrent, end is better but that incentive is still there. This is also contributing to having a somewhat length burst/ramp time for our damage. Will take 3 seconds of Void Torrent + up to 15 seconds of the Rift before it collapses, which is a long time for damage especially in environments like Normal dungeons.

Hero Talents where Functionality is Confusing, Unclear, or Difficult to Track

  • Cooldown of Voidwraith is confusing since when taking Mindbender the cooldown is not lowered at all and remains fixed at 2 minutes, making Mindbender a completely dead talent.

  • Depth of Shadows (451308) has an internal cooldown of 1 second. This can be confusing for players because at higher haste levels and a Death and Madness reset you can cast Shadow Word: Death back to back and the second cast would be unable to proc the effect.

  • Proc rate of Depth of Shadows and the health threshold is currently unknown and not shown on the spell.

  • Inner Quietus does not increase the direct damage of Shadow Word: Pain. This is particular is confusing with Catharsis.

  • Voidwraith’s talent tooltip indicates that it deals “up to 50% additional damage, dealing more damage to higher health enemies” but the actual spell deals a flat 135% of spellpower and then if the mob is above 50% health it deals 100% increased damage. This is inconsistent with the talent tooltip and not sure what is intended.

  • There is nothing baseline in-game to track how many times you have extended Entropic Rift (and if you have any left) with Darkening Horizon without using some kind of WeakAura. (x/5)

  • There is nothing baseline in-game to track how many times you have expanded Entropic Rift with Collapsing Void without using some kind of WeakAura. (x/8)

  • Void Blast’s tooltip shows a low number for Shadow

  • Visual of Entropic Rift can be hard to see in certain environments on the ground, and because it does not re-target after the original dies this is important to know where to drag mobs into, especially for your Tank in PvE environments. The rift not re-targeting after the original dies is also unintuitive.

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Also another point of clarification, in a recent interview with Naguura there was a comment made about Voidweaver:

…the idea that you’re just opening a portal to the void that sort of sucks in all of the enemies around…

Would appreciate some clarification on this and what the intended behavior is, today there is no pull in mechanic that is “black hole” themed but this comment makes me think it might be coming in the future :slight_smile:

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Hello!

Thanks for this well-written post on the state of Voidweaver for Shadow.

First, to clarify the functionality of the rift: There are not current plans for there to be a pull-in effect. We’re closely watching the power level of utility coming from hero talent trees. Given the frequency of the rift, a pull-in would surpass the power level aiming for.

We appreciate the feedback that the slow effect from the slow effect from No Escape may not be utilized as often as we’re hoping especially compared to Dark Energy. As far as gameplay goes, the Entropic Rift window feeling tough to manage is something we aim to improve on during our next pass of the tree. Beyond that, there’s a lot of great bugs and feedback points here that we’ll bring back to the team and discuss.

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Some updates on the other Priest Hero Talent trees:

We’ve updated Oracle’s design to be focused on healing instead of support mechanics and are looking for feedback about how it plays. There are a couple of talents that are not currently ready, and we’ll update those in the coming weeks, including a revision to the capstone. We’re also very excited about the visual effects for this tree and hope you are, too!

The design for Archon is currently a work in progress. The core of the design revolves around Halo, and we’ll unveil its talents soon.

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For Oracle Disc Priest:

  • Premonition: I think I’m just not a fan of the “rotating” element. If you don’t take Narrowed Visions the buff rotates on every Smite or Flash Heal. Good so you can cycle through each buff quickly, but bad if you are looking to use a particular buff at a particular time. Managing this buff while doing a disc ramp doesn’t seem particularly exciting or fun because the buffs just aren’t strong enough. Taking Narrowed Visions feels kind of required just so you can control the buff in a more direct way.

  • Premonition of Piety: Will have good synergies with Disc ramps, not the most exciting buff.

  • Premonition of Insight: Can do combos with Insight + PW:R, Penance, or Mind Blast. Feels okay, I think this should be a larger reduction though.

  • Premonition of Solace: Feels like too many hoops to jump through. 1) Have Solace as the Premonition Buff, 2) Cast single-target spell to apply buff, 3) Heal again to use buff. Obviously this will work better for holy, but for disc it doesn’t feel good. Just make it “increases all single-target healing you do by 40%”.

  • Preventative Measures/Assured Safety: Tying the healing portion of this tree to PoM feels awkward for Disc. Feels like it should have interactions with Renew and/or Flash of Light instead since those are spells we actually use. Just feels disjointed since PoM doesn’t have any interactions in the base disc kit other than raw/free healing. There was a lot of good work to reduce the number of buttons disc has (and the spec plays better because of it), but then Oracle reverses that.

  • Divine Feathers: Going to be hard to see value from this as you can’t force your allies to walk through your feathers. I would change this to “healing has a chance to spawn a feather near an ally and you are also granted 100% of its effect”.

  • Forseen Circumstances: Its okay, what I would rather have: Casting Pain Suppression also casts it on yourself a x% effectiveness.

The Premonition buffs needs to be a lot stronger and the way you select which buff to use and when needs to be re-evaluated. I feel like some other parts of the kit should be involved in this: Rapture, Penance, or Barrier maybe. Maybe take this opportunity to actually make “healing with Penance” a thing outside of just Contrition. The interactions with Power Infusion could have stayed IF AND ONLY IF it was for the priest only.

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Entropic Rift Windows

After spending a bit more time with Voidweaver I wanted to clarify this comment a bit since I was pretty vague in this statement.

The Entropic Rift window specifically for Shadow Priests has a varying degree of pure gameplay feel based on other talents that we are picking. Particularly if you are playing a build with Void Eruption and especially worse if you also have Inescapable Torment. With Void Eruption you inevitably have to sacrifice some casts of spells like Void Bolt to prioritize Entropic Rift casts in a way that makes it feel busy.

There’s enough rotational pressure from Void Blasts, Devouring Plague (and Shadow Word: Death if you have Inescapable Torment) to make the windows feel rewarding that adding the additional rotational pressure of Void Bolt detracts from the experience and makes it feel significantly less rewarding.

For a Hero Talent tree that has Void in the name Void Eruption does not have great synergies with these spells. Void Eruption as a cooldown is primarily focused around Void Bolt, which doesn’t have any direct synergies with Voidweaver. We only rarely will reach maximum extension of the rift duration from very lucky procs, and by doing so we are de-prioritizing Void Bolts.

For other builds that do not use Void Eruption the Rift itself brings a much welcomed pacing into the build that feels like you are working towards something. That something is still a bit uninspiring at the current size of the rift, but that was covered in a different section. Expanding the rift size in general feels lackluster as a Shadow Priest (much better as Discipline).

I think there should be some kind of sweet spot the build lives where expanding the rifts size should feel exciting and rewarding, and the extension of the rift duration should be easy to get a few casts, and reward players that are more skillful with the full extension. For Shadow Priests the rift expansion is extremely underwhelming and it feels like we can almost never get the full duration extension off, even while playing perfectly.

Opener Concerns and Setup Time

Another point I didn’t get to focus on earlier was the opener itself into the Entropic Rift. As a goal we are encouraged to have our DoTs active before pressing Void Torrent, but with how we start off pulls currently we are heavily incentivized to just cast Void Torrent for one tick and then cancel to spawn the rift just to get into the start of our opener. Casting Void Torrent just into Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain on the opener just isn’t worth full channeling, and sitting there building up to 45/50/55 Insanity for Devouring Plague (depending on talents) is quite a long wait for our cooldown cycle.

This is certainly part of tuning overall, but is something we are noticing with the opener and setup of a Voidweaver Shadow Priest that is a bit awkward to play with currently.

Pathing and Build Diversity

The other big thing related to this is how the tree is currently pressuring you to not only pickup Void Torrent, Malediction, and Idol of C’Thun in the bottom section, but talents like Depth of Shadows or Voidwraith also pull you towards Mindbender, Inescapable Torment, and Idol of Y’Shaarj (assuming bugs are worked out/intended to work with these). Mastermind is also an extremely valuable point with any build due to the strength of Void Blast.

Encouraging and locking into the bottom right section is totally expected with the core of Entropic Rift, but it just gets a bit much when we are also heavily encouraged to path on the complete opposite side of the tree, not to mention thematically the Shadow Word: Death and Pet-focused spells don’t exactly fit the Void theme as well as other nodes.

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Just adding my voice to the rotating spell is not a fun mechanic to deal with chorus. As disc priest with high haste, its almost impossible to use the button you want so the only option is to use the 2 stack talent. As someone who has dabbled with hpal since shadowlands, the thing ive disliked the most is playing the blessing of season buff. It rarely lines up for when you want it, and you kind of just send it to keep it on CD.

There are ways to play it with disc, ie use the 2 stack talent and use the 5% heal and cd reduction buttons. But then you need to just throw the other one and its kinda awkward with timings (3 mins vs 1.5 mins) so its useful only every 2nd ramp. Tuning wise its pretty weak, but that can be tweaked, but the main issue is its awkward and not a whole lot of fun to play around.

My suggestion would be to use some ideas from the tree, but add something that specs have been asking for. I dont play holy, but i know a lot of people would love a way to move more and cast. An ability that allows you to see the future by allowing casting while moving would be very much appreciated. The difficulty of priest comes from not being able to move, and having to stutter step with insta casts. Bringing something like spirit walkers grace or hover would be a huge boon to healer priests.

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Below is more feedback from the recent build on Voidweaver as a Shadow Priest.

Void Torrent

Animation feels a bit less satisfying and overall a more lackluster appearance. The ground visual was toned down in this build which makes it easier to see effects around your character, but the overall visual impact of the spell took a hit from this change. The torrent animation also feels slow and less satisfying than what we had last build or on live servers.

Entropic Rift

The change in visual is extremely satisfying and looks amazing.

Size expansion being capped is probably healthy for the spec, however it still feels difficult and unsatisfying to expand it as Shadow, and the max size is quite small.

There was also a new bug added with Entropic Rift, the ending target is always the one you cast Void Torrent on, but the Entropic Rift spawn location will swap to whatever you are currently targeting when Void Torrent ends. This can lead to major delays in the rift reaching the target.

Collapsing Void

The change to Collapsing Void just being an AoE spell around the ending point of Entropic Rift feels much better to play with and is easier to understand what will get hit by the rift compared to the previous iteration. The fact that the size of the Collapsing Void is fixed also makes it more consistent and easier to understand.

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I’m a bit disappointed to see the spriest tree continues to be fractured between voidform/dark ascension and mind flay/mind spike. I feel like the design of shadow priest is anchored by the constant need to make sure that every idea fits within the constraints of the two different styles. I really wish we would pick a lane here and focus all the design and ideas on one and not both paths.

I really wish mind spike/dark ascension would be removed from the tree entirely in a rework while the void tilt of voidform and mind flay were tripled down on. To me the voidform fantasy/feel is significantly cooler and more unique. I know the designs in the far past made balancing this spell difficult, but I would rather we try and build on voidform than dark ascension.

Also in the theme of vibe and feel, I wish devouring plague would be updated in name, animation, and potential tooltip graphic to be void based. The analogy I would make here would be to the shadowlands spells getting thematically updated for dragon flight to more naturally match the specs. Maybe I’m alone in this opinion, but a plague spell on a void class feels forced.

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At present, I still feel perplexed by Shadow’s current state.

I’m still extremely split between seeing shadow in its original state (shadow copies haunting your target) vs void priest and I wish that had some play here. It also seem that shadow struggles with its identity. Plague, darkness, shadow form, vampiric touch, to spiking void magic, entropy, sparking fear, assaulting the mind. A lot of it seems relevant to shadowlands and the reaches of the void, but do they mix and mingle well? Is it cohesive?

I agree with the takes above, especially in a visual sense. Entropic void is neat, but I feel like it suffers in the same way our Shadowlands variant did. Shadow crash being a main aoe filler still feels bland - or really awful if someone decides to suddenly move. Halo also feels like a filler spell to fill space in the rotation. I like the updated visual, but cascade was infinitely flashier.

I wish we could have a spell like Dark Void return and replace this type of thing instead of having slow moving projectiles. Something we can target.

For movement, I’m glad we see a return of void torrent giving us something to run with, though I’m not into the new visual either. It doesn’t really feel as useful as instant mind blast procs that we had in the expansion prior.

I’m not the world’s best shadow priest, but I’m still not sure it feels like it’s going to hold a candle to other rdps. I have a deep love-hate relationship with priest and I miss it.

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Oracle Priest

Figured I’d start some feedback on this hero spec, from the perspective of someone who plays a lot of Holy and Disc priest.

General Thoughts

I feel like Oracle is not really working either on a gameplay mechanics, nor a “class fantasy” level.

On the gameplay mechanics side, I feel like the major problem with the past iteration wasn’t JUST the buffing itself, but also the delivery mechanism. Holy and Disc both have quite a lot of buttons, and both specs use almost all of them in their healing. A buff (even in the new oracle - it’s just now a self buff) that rotates between three different things from every single global you cast and on a new button in your rotation is a pretty large mental load to add. We just got done streamlining a lot of Disc, too, but Oracle seems to go back on that by adding a totally new button, as well as suggesting that Disc players should cast PoM too.

It’s something I can generally handle, but I feel like if I was playing a high key M+, or Mythic Raid, where I’ve got a whole lot less bandwidth for mental load, this might just feel like a burden.

But also on a fantasy level, when I hear “Oracle” I’m immediately thinking of precognition, fate and wisdom by divine insight. The spec sort of delivers on that by giving PoM/PW:S a nudge, but the tree’s main mechanic more just feels like giving yourself a power boost to your heals. Personally, I would have preferred something more heavily focused into our preventative spells. More focus into PW:S/PoM. Make Guardian Spirit give some DR, or Pain supp/barrier more healing to those under them, etc. OR some new ways to take advantage of pre-planning. Something like Fae Guardians - giving us an extra mitigation tool - or even the mana fairy but instead of mana maybe you deal extra damage when your allies do to that target because you’re ‘predicting’ their globals, etc. Keeping in mind, I’m not saying ‘just bring Fae Guardians back!’ or trying to stomp on the design. These are just the kinds of things I would expect from a tree called “oracle.”

That said, I’ll move on to more specific mechanics:

Premonition

Premonition feels a bit odd to use:

  • The current selection method is a bit of a burden when dealing with difficult healing scenarios (presumably when you’d want to pop it).
    • If I realize that I want to use Insight, for example, and I’m currently on Premonition of Piety but I need to triage heal someone badly after a flash heal cast, I might Flash heal → Holy Word: Serenity (or Penance for Disc). Well, I’ve now lost my chance to pop Premonition of Insight, because my 2 globals sent me to Solace. That means I have to hold Premonition for 2 more globals in order to use it.
      • This ALSO means, that I now have to hold whatever spells I was planning on popping for reduced cooldown for those 2 globals as well.
    • This kind of leaves the spell in a spot where you’d pretty much want a weakaura for it in the middle of your screen.
  • Premonition of Solace is by FAR the worse of the three, and likely would never come close even tuned up a lot.
    • In any scenario where you’d want to ST funnel, both Disc and Holy are better off popping Piety and slamming some AoE heals. A Piety Serenity/CoH/Pom bounces are going to funnel more healing than is necessary into the single target than a 33% healing boost on one target. In Disc’s case, Atonement will do more.
    • In any scenario where you’re not needing to funnel, or want more general coverage, you’d just Insight 3 PoMs out.

The rest of the Tree

Preventative Measures
This is an OK boost, but then as a Discipline priest, you look at voidweaver and see Inner Quietus, which is just a larger boost to the core spell you’d be using here. I DO understand that I get an extra stack of PoM, so there’s a bit more healing loaded on, but it’s really hard to make that comparison and not feel a bit cheated here.

That said, you look even further in the Voidweaver tree and see Void empowerment - another 80% boost to PW:S and it really, really feels like we’re getting nothing here.

Assured Safety
This is awkward for Disc priest ramps in raid, in that you kind of want to cast PoM now due to its efficiency, but it means your ramps now look something like: PW:S>PoM>Renew>Renew>PW:S>Renew>PoM>Renew>Flash Heal>PW:S

It’s really kind of awkward to cast.

From Holy’s Perspective, it feels very minor? It’s nice that the initial target gets a little shielding, however it does relatively nothing for PW:S. It’s also marred a little by the fact that when casting PW:S, the single stack PoM doesn’t get modified by the Holy Priest talent Prayers of the Virtuous, so you’ll only ever get one application.

Preemptive Care
Feels very weak for Holy. 3s of renew is just one more tick. Doesn’t feel worth writing home about really. This only feels super good if we had our DF Season 4 tier set and it was applying to those renews, but we’re losing that going into a new xpac, obviously.

For Disc, this is a decent bonus, can’t complain.

Perfect Vision
This isn’t very good, IMO. Putting something on a 54 second cooldown is actually kind of awkward. You generally will want it to line up with other things, so you’ll end up holding it a decent chunk, so it’s unlikely this bonus would really get used.

Miraculous Recovery/Waste No Time

Miraculous Recovery just wins this so handily in every form of content for holy priest. We don’t even want to cast Prayer of Healing it’s so incredibly inefficient, and heal is so efficient already, we don’t gain much.

For disc, Waste no Time is an OK choice to use just before your ramp. But Premonition is REALLY hard to control during ramp.

Foreseen Circumstances

Disc comes out on top of this one again. But not by much. Both bonuses here aren’t AMAZING, but Disc’s generally makes the spell better at what it does. Half the time with Guardian Spirit, you’re using it for the healing boost, and you’re going to burst someone to full in a couple globals. I would much rather this actually increase the healing boost than extend the duration a couple seconds - and maybe that will mean I only need one Serenity instead of a serenity + flash heal, etc.

Narrowed Visions/Fatebender
No contest to Fatebender here.

Narrowed visions feels like a nerf to the spec because you’ll HAVE to use solace, and solace is actually that weak. Fatebender is also not very good, but at least you could rotate between Piety and Insight.

Grand Reveal

This is just more premonition, and actually makes the usability problems with premonition worse in its current iteration.

Also, it heavily favors Holy’s PoM bounces in raid. Disc won’t get much use out of this, because they’re generally not casting that much PoM/PW:S.

Oracle as a Disc Priest

Since we have Disc’s other hero spec potential in the game already, it does beg the question of “Why would I ever go oracle?”

Voidweaver is relatively unintrusive - it procs off mind blast and can be extended by 5s. This gives it a ~62% uptime while playing well, in comparison to Premonition’s ~15%?

Not only that, it has stronger buffs to PW:S, and far more healing baked in through damage transfer to Atonement. It also straight up increases Atonement’s healing by 20%, and another 100% from your smites which are also empowered by almost 300% already.

It just seems like there’s a ton of power baked into Voidweaver, and Oracle, even at its top potential wouldn’t come anywhere close.

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Archon Holy Feedback:
I healed a few of the dungeons with the Archon tree

Gameplay: Feels significantly better than Oracle, mainly because Halo is basically a proper throughput CD now. For the dungeons I did, Halo was a great button to press when people were taking damage, the free surge of lights are nice, and I like the synergies for CDR.

Fantasy: Slight miss. I think when you look at the name Archon and the description of it, the talents don’t really scream ‘Archon’. To me the name implies things like Boon of the Ascended, Power Infusion, Apotheosis so the focus on Halo seems a bit disjointed from a fantasy perspective. It has small Apotheosis tie ins but they don’t really feel strong enough that make me feel like an Archon.

Power Surge - My only gripe about this is the radius increase, I’m not sure that 10yd increase will always be useful, will be encounter dependent. If the raid or group is all stacked in front of the boss, a 10yd radius increase isn’t that valuable. Especially since Halo will now follow you anyways. My suggestion would be to take this 10 yd increase and move it to a choice node. Option A: The radius of Halo is increased by 10yd. Option B: The travel speed of Halo is increased by 20%. This lets players pick if they want range or speed.

Manifested Power/Empowered Surges/Energy Cycle - This series of talents is great and feels good when your Halos are bouncing. Though I don’t really get why its three sperate talents instead of just one or two. “Manifested Power: Creating a Halo grants Surge of Light. Surge of Light increases the healing of Flash Heal by 30% and reduces the cooldown of Holy Word: Sanctify by 4 seconds.” Then slot in one or two new talents.

Energy Compression/Sustained Potency - So one side is clearly for if you pick Salvation and the other side is for Apotheosis. The tree is centered around Halo but its also meant so you can take either Apotheosis or Salvation. Feels like you all should just commit to the increased Apotheosis uptime/free Apotheosis procs gamepaly rather than accommodating both choices. I feel like both the gameplay and the fantasy will be a lot stronger.

Concentrated Infusion - The only downside of this is typically when you are using PI its based around DPS CDs not your own. Extra haste is super valuable for Shadow/Disc less for Holy. Would change this to “power infusion increases your damage and healing done by 10%”.

What I feel is missing: Really feel there should be a node in here that says “Casting Halo grants you Apotheosis for X seconds and Apotheosis now increases your damage by X%”. The overall design is solid, just very safe and I feel like it could be pushed a bit further. On the flip side at least its not Oracle. I think Archon doesn’t have as strong of a “power moment” as Voidweaver. The Archon tree is based around Halo but for holy I feel like it should also be based around increased Apotheosis uptime. I feel this will help with the fantasy and gameplay a lot.

As a special mention: I must also mention that this tree could work very well for Disc as well since Halo does both damage and healing. Energy Cycle, Perfected Form, Sustained Potency could all work with Rapture or Ultimate Penitence. Talents like Concentrated Infusion are better for Disc than they are for Holy. As a Disc player its ironic that Archon tree has more direct synergy with the Disc kit than Oracle.

Rating all the priest trees based on gameplay and fantasy
Voidweaver Disc - 10/10
Archon Holy - 7/10
Oracle Holy - 3/10
Oracle Disc - 1/10

Archon and Voidweaver are in good spots. Oracle is going to need another re-work.

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